Spice World (1997)

User Rating:

2.8/10   

Director:

Bob Spiers

Writers:

The Spice Girls (idea) &
Kim Fuller (idea) ...

Release Date:

23 January 1998 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Comedy | Family | Music

Tagline:

They perform for royalty and entertain millions the world over. But now, they're making a movie.

Plot:

The film follows the Spice Girls and their entourage (mostly fictional characters) - manager Clifford...

Plot Keywords:

Singing | Pregnancy | Girl Band | Female Bonding | Legs

Awards:

1 win & 9 nominations

Cast

Melanie Brown	...	Melanie B - Scary Spice
Emma Bunton	...	Emma - Baby Spice
Melanie Chisholm	...	Melanie C - Sporty Spice
Geri Halliwell	...	Geri - Ginger Spice (as Geraldine Halliwell)
Victoria Beckham	...	Victoria - Posh Spice (as Victoria Adams)
Kevin Allen	...	TV Director
Devon Anderson	...	Jack
Michael Barrymore	...	Mr. Step
Richard Briers	...	Bishop
Simon Chandler	...	Hospital Parent
Elvis Costello	...	Himself
Alan Cumming	...	Piers
The Dream Boys	...	Themselves
David Fahm	...	Enzo
Jason Flemyng	...	Brad

Also Known As:

Five (UK) (working title)
Five Girls (UK) (working title)
Its Been a Hard 15 Minutes (UK) (working title)
Spice Girls (UK) (working title)
Spice Girls: The Movie (UK) (working title)
Spice Up Your Life! (UK) (working title)
Spice: The Movie (UK) (working title)
Spiceworld (UK) (alternative spelling)

MPAA:

Rated PG for some vulgarity, brief nudity and language.

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Nova Scotia/Ontario) | Malaysia:U | Iceland:L (original rating) | Iceland:LH (video rating) | USA:PG (Certificate No. 35602) | South Korea:12 | Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG | Brazil:Livre | Finland:S | France:U | Germany:o.Al. | Mexico:A | Netherlands:AL | Peru:PT | Portugal:M/6 | Singapore:PG | Spain:T | Sweden:Btl | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

John Cleese turned down the Michael Barrymore cameo.

Goofs:

Continuity: The girls' hairs are all flying when the ETs are coming down but when the camera shows their faces their hair is calm.

Quotes:

The Chief: When the rabbit of chaos is pursued by the ferret of disorder through the fields of anarchy, it is time to hang your pants on the hook of darkness. Whether they're clean or not.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "I'm Alan Partridge: The Colour of Alan (#2.2)" (2002)

Soundtrack:

Hallelujah

Much better & much funnier than you'd think

This movie is FUN. And the sad thing is that most people are too close-minded to see that. The general consensus seems to be: "It's the Spice Girls in a movie? It's going to be awful!" and either they never see the movie, or they allow their prejudices to judge the movie for them.

Firstly, let me say that I am not, and was never, a Spice Girls fan. I was way too old for their target market when they were popular, and whilst one or two of their songs had catchy tunes, some were downright annoying. They were a very cleverly manufactured girl band in a time when that market was wide-open. Giving each girl a distinctive character and style was a stroke of genius on the part of their 'creators', and while they didn't have particularly strong voices (except perhaps for Mel C), they didn't have particularly bad ones either. I've heard far worse. So I went into this movie purely out of curiosity, expecting it to be somewhere between awful and merely silly, but I ended up enjoying myself thoroughly. Also, my 65-year-old father loves this movie, and he saw it only having heard vaguely of the Spice Girls, but not knowing their music at all. Yes, Spiceworld is an exploitation movie; BUT it does an excellent job at it! What I loved most was the way it poked fun at itself all the way through. The character of the screenwriter pitching his idea to the girls' manager (brilliantly played by Richard E. Grant) saying "It's obvious to us that the Spicegirls are movie stars!", when it's obvious that they're not, and everyone knows it - there's even a scene at the beginning where he says, "Yes, but can they ACT?" and his boss responds with, 'Who cares?", or similar. I loved that. And while the girls CAN'T really act (some are worse than others; I've read that Victoria was the only one who had taken acting lessons before, but I can't say it showed since I thought she was the weakest link), it's obvious that they're having fun with the script, and they don't do too badly at all.

The script was another great surprise to me; it's full of good lines and funny characters that poke fun at themselves and their stereotypes. An example of this is the great Roger Moore playing the "Chief", who is presumably the Big Boss of the Spice Girls. We only ever see him on the phone with Clifford the manager (Richard E. Grant), and every time we do he is stroking, in pure Bond Villain (or Dr Evil) fashion, a small white animal on his lap. But every time you see him he has a different animal; first it's a cat, then a rabbit, a tiny white pig etc. I thought that was such a great way of poking fun at the stereotype of the villain always having a white pet. And then the character himself has these fantastically enigmatic, senseless, but hysterical lines, like: "When the rabbit of chaos is pursued by the ferret of disorder through the fields of anarchy, it is time to hang your pants on the hook of darkness. Whether they're clean or not." and: "The headless chicken can only know where he's been. He can't see where he's going. Do not be that chicken." I love that off-the-wall humour, and this movie is full of it. Of course, some people just don't GET that kind of humour, which is fine by me as long as it doesn't make them slam the film because of it.

Other moments I love, which elevate this film from could-have-been-dodgy to funny, are the casting of Meatloaf as the Spice Girls bus driver, and then having him say lines like: {on fixing the clogged toilets} "Hey, I love these girls. I'll do anything for them...but I won't do that!" - which is, of course, a play on Meatloaf's hit song "Anything for Love". Also the parody of the stereotypical characters of the girls, which of course were made up for them anyway, like Victoria not knowing what to wear, and Mel C saying "It must be really hard for you, Victoria, trying to decide whether to wear the little Gucci dress, or the little Gucci dress, or the little Gucci dress", and Victoria responding "Exactly!", or when Victoria falls into the Thames and continues to scream for help once she's been rescued, and yelling "This dress is dry-clean only!", or Geri saying "Calm down, haven't you ever heard of the word 'compromisation'?" There are scores of these great moments but they really work better in the film than if I wrote them down here. All I'm saying is that this movie is not ever in a million years as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Yes, it's not the greatest, but then most films aren't. It's so much funnier than you'd think, and yes it has its cheesy moments, but sometimes it's SUPPOSED to be cheesy! That's where it's funny. I really don't understand why this film, whose only aim was to be FUN, and in this it succeeded more than admirably in my opinion, is in IMDb's Worst.