Spice World

The Spice Girls brought 90s Brit-pop to the big screen with Spice World. Filled with musical numbers, celebrity cameos, and a whole lot of confusion, this film had the band tear through London in a double-decker bus with that evil paparazzi in hot pursuit. Join co-hosts Jon and Mark as they do their best to follow along.

It's time to spice up your life!

Transcript

Jon (00:00)
Tonight in the Rock and Roll Theatre, colors of the world, spice up your life. Spice World, the Spice Girls.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Rock and Roll Theatre Podcast. My name is John, I'm joined by my co-host and my brother Mark. For each episode here, we dive into music, movies, pop culture, all sorts of fun stuff. And today we're tackling Spice World, of course starring the Spice Girls.

Mark (00:34)
Spice World was released on December 26, 1997, Boxing Day. It is rated PG. It has a runtime of 1 hour 33 minutes. Its genre is a musical comedy. It was directed by Bob Spears and written by Kim Fuller. Of course, it stars the Spice Girls. That's Victoria, Jerry, Emma, Mel B, and Melanie C. In this movie, they're playing heightened, self-aware versions of themselves.

So the film is supposed to echo the loose and surreal structure of A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles. It's supposed to blend fiction, satire, musical, interludes, and celebrity cameos. I don't really know if it accomplishes this. We will get into that in a few moments. It's also worth noting that this movie generated $56 million at the box office against a budget of $26 million. So it was successful.

Something that came up a few times when I was researching this movie in a variety of places is that Spice World is considered the highest grossing film of all time by a musical group. I could not confirm the actual source for this or find any sort of authoritative list as to what the other films on this list are. It is definitely not the highest grossing musical of all time, no, but this sort of new category of something by a musical group, so.

Take that for what you will.

Jon (02:05)
Just a quick glimpse into what the Spice Girls were up to at the time of the movie. They formed between around 1994 to 1996. They went through a couple different versions with different members, different managers, but the Spice Girls, as we kind of know them today, took shape around in early 1996. they released their first single, Wanna Be, in July. it went on to be a global smash, a humongous hit. It followed up with their album, Spice, in November of that same year. And the Spice Girls were kind of based on British boy bands of the time, like Take That, Five.

more I'm not familiar with not being from England and it worked out really well for them at the time. Each one had their own distinct personality. We had baby, ginger, sporty, scary and posh. Got them all.

that really played into their image and you could just relate immediately to each one, to each character to see who they were. So that really set them apart in the music landscape. And at the time, the music landscape was a little bit different too. We'd seen most of 90s being dominated by grunge, alternative, pop punk, hip hop, things like that. pop was kind of in a way to take over again. And the Spice Girls as a girl group hit the mark perfectly. They sold millions of records. They were everywhere all at once. You didn't know anything about them six months ago. They were everywhere six months later.

So of course it was time to make a movie.

Mark (03:19)
Filming of Spice World took place primarily in London and at Twickenham Studios it spanned eight weeks with extensive on location shooting at over 40 different British landmarks.

Production for this film featured very long shooting days, up to 14 hours, it's been reported, and there was intense media attention due to the group's global fame at the time, of course. Director Bob Spears came from a television comedy background. He worked on projects like Absolutely Famous and Faulty Towers, and this carried influence into the film's sketch-like structure.

Jon (03:56)
It definitely seems like a bunch of random activities for the Spice Girls to be thrown in through throughout the movie. And we're gonna get into all of that in a second here, but a quick note, there are spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen Spice World or haven't seen it long, long time like I had, hit pause now, come back, we'll be here.

And if you'd like to do us a quick favor here at the Rock and Roll Theatre, we've noticed a few new listeners coming by lately and that's great. We love to have you. We got older episodes you can check out on all sorts of different movies, bands, what have you, as well as wherever you are in the world. Like, subscribe, click, comment, whatever the case may be. Find us on the socials. We have a bunch of fun TikTok and YouTube videos out there for you guys to check out. But for now, let's tackle Spice World by the Spice Girls.

Mark (04:36)
So the film opens with the song Too Much by the Spice Girls playing. And the first thing I'm sort of getting here as a viewer is this sort of retro, almost kind of James Bond, 1960s, early 1970s style graphics. We're seeing the different members of the group appear on screen in sort of these, I don't know, I can't really describe the outfits properly other than saying.

This kind of looks like a parody of Charlie's Angels or something like that. It's kind of got this spy vibe. Again, very retro 60s, 70s. We're seeing a list of actors on the screen of who's gonna be in the movie. It's pretty odd. I'm really not sure what's going on here. But then we kind of kick into more of a familiar scene. The band is playing at top of the pops. It's a really good intro to showcase all of their different vocal styles, each member of the group and what they contribute to it.

Definitely looks like lip syncing is going on here though.

Jon (05:35)
I think it's safe to say they lip-synch the entire movie and most of their career. As soon as they're done, they run off stage and they bump right into Elton John. I saw this movie back in the theatres when it first came out in the late 90s. I only remember two things about it. That Elton John was in it and they had a bus. So there's a documentary crew filming them around too. They're trying to get the girls' attention. They're totally ignoring them. That will play out more later on. And the fans surround their Union Jack bus that all the girls storm onto.

Mark (06:02)
This is the Spice Bus. Unforgettable name, huge letters right across the top. This Spice Bus acts as the band's headquarters. So again, they're sort of like superheroes, spies. I'm still not too sure at this point. And obviously the interior of the bus is way larger than what it would actually be in real life. There's no way this thing is fitting into traffic lane width restrictions considering each member of the band basically has their own bedroom on the inside of it.

So we see different scenes, kind of a montage of them cruising around London. They're telling jokes, they're arguing with each other. It is actually one of the more memorable scenes, at least for me, of this movie. And we end up at the Royal Albert Hall. They're having a press conference because they're gonna have a live concert there soon that's gonna be broadcast all over the world.

Jon (06:51)
Then once we get there, there's now a second film crew following the girls. These ones are trying to make a fictional movie with them. And the film crew is pretty unique. We have Mark McKinney, who's famous from Kids in the Hall, and George Wendt, who's most famous for being Norm on Cheers. An odd pairing for sure. At the same time, we get introduced to Roger Moore, James Bond himself, but this time he's playing a boss type villain, and he's giving very ominous warnings to the managers. And his first one is be ready for trouble. Then their friend shows up.

She's pregnant, Nicola. there's a dream sequence of all the girls, what they would be like as moms. It's kind of weird and there's more dreams to come for sure. They do say you'll be there for the rehearsal. The film crews all run around trying to get a shot. It's solid. It's pre-recorded pop music. It's fine. The girls seem fine. The band seems fine.

Mark (07:39)
So now we start to go into some of the subplots of the movie. One of them is, I guess the paparazzi is trying to do a smear campaign against the group. We see different stories appearing on the daily event. I guess that's supposed to be sort of a news and gossip style show in England at the time.

We see more pitches from this attempt at having different movies from, are they villains? I'm not sure again, so I'm still confused here. And then we get some more weird dream sequences.

Jon (08:17)
get Mel B screaming at the fish tank on the bus quite loudly. Yes, I did have to type that sentence out Mel B screams at fish and they move on to a photo shoot. We hear the song Saturday Night Divas, which of course another Spice Girls. I wouldn't say a huge hit, but definitely a known Spice Girls song. They got lots of different costumes. Charlie's Angels, as Mark mentioned earlier, they're acting like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, David Bowie, all sorts of other things I can't remember. It's a fun scene, but the paparazzi, he's sneaking around. He vows to get the girls. So then we hear stop.

which is a big hit from their album, their second album. And there's more cruising around, the girls are still hanging out in their big bus, the spice bus, getting ready to go to a party. So they go to a party at this pub and the girls seem extremely bored.

Mark (09:01)
So again, their pregnant friend is there, Nicola, and we gotta weave her into the story somehow. So the Spice Girls are all invited to be godmothers to the baby. So that, we'll hear this and see this play out a little bit later. We also see this documentary crew running around filming the Spice Girls. So I guess they're also filming their own documentary while all of this is going on? Sure. And then one of them remarks,

Is the Pope Catholic? And then we get a new paparazzi smear campaign called Pope Shock. Intense. Good.

Jon (09:38)
One of the headlines too is, is the Pope Catholic? Because that's what Ginger says. And I kind of forgot the documentary crew was even there because they were shown for like six seconds at the start of the movie. So now we have three separate plot lines going on behind the main plot line of the Spice Girls. If you're trying to keep track here like we were. And then we cut to a scene of yet again, Roger Moore's being very cryptic and just making no sense, quite frankly. I think he filmed this all probably in like, I don't know, 20 minutes or an hour, all of his different scenes. so we move on.

girls go to Italy to play on a television show. And for the show they're going to do I'm the leader of the gang, which is a Gary Glitter cover. And the less we say about Gary Glitter, the better. So there's all these buff sailor dudes hanging around and you know, getting friendly with the girls. They don't like it. They know they want to be taken a little more seriously. I don't know. so there's a big kind of argument and there's a compromise where the managers decide, okay, we'll dress them in like kind of sailor costumes instead. It's a good scene. It's

I don't remember the girls ever doing this song outside of this movie But I'd like to say it's their official version of the song now if you want to hear that song put the Spice Girls version on

Mark (10:43)
So now we're back on the bus. Who's driving the bus? Meat Loaf.

Jon (10:50)
Of course.

Mark (10:52)
Of course.

Jon (10:53)
Of course.

Mark (10:55)
Rock legend Meat Loaf is driving the Spice Girls around.

They need a bathroom break, of course, and they're in the middle of nowhere. It just happens to be like that. So I thought maybe even the bus broke down. can't remember.

Jon (11:05)
There's no bathroom on the bus? The bus is huge. There's no bathroom? ⁓ yeah,

sure. Okay, I think the bus broke down. Yes, ⁓

Mark (11:13)
I think it did

break down, but they needed a bathroom break anyway and they were going out into the middle of the woods.

Jon (11:17)
It's

a good excuse to go in the woods.

Mark (11:21)
The song that we're hearing is, I'd do anything but I won't do that. No. ⁓ Okay, so this is a very weird scene here. There's a clearing in the woods. So the group walk into the clearing in the woods. They look up, what do they see? A spaceship is about to land.

Jon (11:25)
Meat Loaf.

Mark (11:41)
So it lands and I think it's four or five aliens walk off the spaceship. They're sort of shorter in stature. They're wearing these robes. They look a little bit like those popular troll dolls from the 1990s with the neon hair and the really exaggerated nose and ear features.

Jon (12:00)
Yeah, kind of.

Mark (12:02)
They're sort of speaking in this gibberish style ⁓ language and you can kind of hear a word that makes sense here or there. Like they'll say something about one of their songs or something about the concert. So then they start to try to barter with the group for tickets. No way, show sold out, forget it, you're not getting in.

Jon (12:25)
Doesn't matter how far you traveled, you're not getting in. The show is sold out.

Mark (12:29)
They're still able to get some autographs and even one of the aliens convinces Jerry, Ginger Spice, to give them a kiss.

Jon (12:38)
Considering how inappropriate the aliens were being with the girls, I'm surprised Jerry even did that. That scene is exactly how we described it. That's a real thing. It's in this movie. It is bizarre. One of the weirder things we've covered in the Rock and Roll Theatre. It kind of reminds me of the episode we did with Kiss, Piece of Family in the Park. Same level of just weirdness, But moving on, the girls are getting tired. They've been on the road for a while now. The bus is breaking down. know, Meat Loaf's upset. So the manager's contact Roger Moore and he says, no day's off.

He's a slave driver. So they decide instead they go to a boot camp and with this crazy general that's yelling at them I guess it's a dance boot camp. They're on their new dance steps And when we said earlier the faulty towers producers this one has a definite faulty towers vibe There's a good fun sped up montage. We hear never get up on the good times, which is a kind of underrated spice song I would say we'll talk about it later and all the girls are in army gear and they're walking around and learning new dances and going through like I don't know like a military obstacle course except for posh and posh this place this

character perfectly. Posh has a camo dress instead and heels and decides just to walk around the outside of the army course and not partake in any of it.

From there the girls crash out in a mansion for the evening and it's a very Scooby-Doo-esque style mansion. It's totally that vibe to it. The paparazzi guy is hiding in the toilet. I don't know how he would fit in the toilet, but he's hiding in the toilet. I kind of forgot he was around. We haven't seen him for a couple of scenes, but sure enough he's there and he's stalking the girls. the worst part is the girls, they do feel afraid. They're kind of running around. They don't know what's going on. There's a massive suit of armor in the hallway and we're all expecting, okay, the paparazzi guy must be in

suit of armor and he's gonna start moving but he never does it's kind of disappointing then from there move on to more pitches about the movie from norm and kids in the hall and they're all bad they're all stupid pitches ⁓ except for maybe spice force 5 that might work i don't know also the documentary people are filming around we've filmed crews everywhere in this movie then the fans meet some girls there's some blatant pepsi product placement because the spice girls were definitely sponsored by pepsi and we'll talk about that in a

But Meat Loaf's getting concerned that the girls are just doing too much.

Mark (14:50)
done enough yet.

They steal a speedboat.

I mean, that's against the law. You can't steal. They steal a speedboat.

Jon (15:00)
Before their fans meet and greet, they stole a speedboat.

Mark (15:04)
They're driving around at full speed on the River Thames in London.

I'm not making this up. The song that we're hearing in the background is My Boy Lollipop by the Cordettes. And of course the paparazzi are chasing the Spice Girls. Because they gotta keep up the smear campaign. The boat ends.

Jon (15:21)
Not safe.

Yep. The girls seem unaffected

by, by the way. The girls don't seem to care that all these bad headlines are coming out about them. They seem very nonplus about it.

Mark (15:35)
So the boat ends up hitting a log and it crashes. Kids fall overboard. They also have some random kids, some fans, I guess, with them on the boat. But...

Jon (15:47)
Extra fans to

the meet and greet? I don't know, but yes, you're right. There's more people there in the crash than there was at the start. But hey, there you go.

Mark (15:54)
Sporty and Posh end up saving the day. The kids are fine, but Posh wrecked her dress. So that's not good. And of course, the daily event comes in to write up this boat drama.

Jon (16:08)
Meanwhile, the girls are not happy with their manager. I mean, I guess the managers fears are not focused on the upcoming pay-per-view concert probably was back in the 90s because they're stealing boats and meeting aliens. So they get in a big argument and they're all the managers are all concerned. Is this the end of the Spice Girls? So the management decides to get drunk and call Roger Moore, which is a bad idea. He is no help to them. He's totally useless. Is this one reason I think he's feeding a carrot to a pig here at some point? Maybe that was the scene. I don't know.

The daily event is happy however, because they got the headlines that they wanted, more smear in the press, although the girls yet again seem unaffected by it. Instead, they're reminiscing and flashing back to the star of the Spice Girls. They're in the coffee shop above what was their apartment at the time, and they play wannabe for the first time for the shop owner on a CD boombox. And you can't deny it's a hit. I remember when this song came out. I was then and I still now work as a professional DJ, and I remember this song coming out and how big it was. And I would play it every night and I still play it.

for a Spice Girls tribute band maybe a year and a half ago. There's 600 people there. So this song holds up. However, when it first came out, I just had on a CD single and there's no remixes, no nothing. And the song's only two minutes and 30 seconds. So I had to be really creative. I would basically take two copies of it and play them back to back to make it into a little bit of a longer song. But I digress. The girls are at the coffee shop. They play it for the owner. He loves it, all of sudden they scan out and the apartment's now abandoned.

It's older, I guess two years have gone by, I don't know. And they play Viva Forever in the background. They all meet up and they decide, let's take our pregnant friend out to party.

The managers are still drinking at the same time though. Elvis Costello, another random celebrity in this movie, is their bartender.

So the girls are partying. It's a very 90s club. We hear, do you think you are? It's a good dance track from the Spice Girls. We see more Pepsi product placements. We see that their friend goes into labor, however, at the club. this is obviously sends them ready to a panic. But Meat Loaf to the rescue. He gets everybody to the hospital. Fun fact about Eatloaf, his son-in-law is Scott Ian, guitar player from Anthrax.

Nicolette goes into a long labor and the girls decide to hang out.

Some parents come and find the girls and say, our son's in a coma, I think it is. Could you, wake him up out of the coma? And of course the girls do with their magical spice powers or something. I don't know. The dad seems very happy the Spice Girls are there too. But the girls are MIA for the gig. Even the nurses in the stage are talking about how we're going to the show. I hope I see you there. All the different subplots are fighting. The subplots almost, they really don't matter, but they're there. We'll talk about them. sure enough, it's a baby. It's a girl.

and the paparazzis all of sudden jump out. The girls are mad about this. They chase them around all throughout the hospital. And at this point, this is another really weird part of this movie. All of a sudden, we kind of drop out from the movie and we learn that this is a movie within a movie. This is the power of girl power. This is how it's gonna end. So basically, we're watching a narration of the movie. I don't know, Mark. What do you think?

Mark (19:07)
too confused by this point to really follow what's going on.

What we need to do next is we need to go back on the Spice Bus, route number 19.

Jon (19:18)
Absolutely, but we got a little bit of a problem, Mark. Meat Loaf has passed out in the bushes.

Mark (19:23)
Doesn't matter.

Posh Spice has taken the wheel. The other Spice Girls are up in the top of the bus. It's absolute chaos. It actually reminds me of another famous 90s movie, Speed, where there's a bomb on the bus and the bus has to stay at a certain speed the whole time. We're kind of doing this scene now in Spice World. So with Posh Spice at the wheel, we are driving around the streets of London. We are

tipping and turning around every corner. It's just madness. There's nuns at one point getting in the way of things here. And turns out the London Bridge it's going up. We got to jump the gap. So obvious, no problem.

Jon (20:11)
No problem, Posh. No problem. She got

this, Mark. No problem.

Mark (20:16)
So obviously we can't actually put a double-decker bus over an opening bridge in real life. So the film crew, what do they do to get around this? We see a nice interlude of like a toy.

SpiceBus going over a toy London Bridge opening up. It's not that bad, it's okay.

Jon (20:36)
Kinda funny, I kinda liked it. Saved them some bucks in production, right? You know? Some of these movies we review aren't profitable. This one was.

Mark (20:38)
memorable. Yeah, it's memorable. Yep.

Once we end up clearing that gap, Baby Spice finds the bomb on the bus.

Jon (20:52)
And that doesn't really pay off yet. She just kind of looks at it goes, oh, there's a bomb. But they get to the Royal Albert Hall, Posh got them there somehow in one piece and everyone's still alive. They have to take the Hello Cleveland route into the gig since they're not backstage. And they run up the steps like Rocky. But if you notice, there's only a couple of steps.

I've been in the real ones in Philly. There's a lot more steps than that. Kind of funny. And the cops show up, however, and they're like, you're not getting in. Like you just, you know, did all of this basically attempted vehicle manslaughter all over the streets of London. And the big crime was you jumped the London Bridge with a bus, which they sure did. I mean, they landed it and everything seems OK. So, of course, the girls just flirt with the cops and the cops are like, oh, OK, that's no big deal. And let them into the show. So as they're coming to the show, the management team still has no idea. Are they going to show up? Are they not going to show up?

Of course, they already let the crowd in the building. They're already chanting for the Spice Girls. The manager's getting pretty dark. he's like, tying up a noose just hanging out there. All of a sudden the girls bust in and they have saved the day. But before they go on stage, we see Roger Moore feeding his pet pig one last time. We hit Spice Up Your Life, the huge hit off their second album. It's great crowd scene. I'm sure they packed it full of fans. It's fine. It's them performing. It's good, I guess, you know, and then we learned that their movie deal is a

go near the end here. So everybody starts dancing, having fun, the credits start to roll.

Mark (22:16)
As the credits start to roll, we get led into a sort of behind the scenes scene where the different actors from the movie are kind of in character, kind of not. It's a little bit of breaking the fourth wall. People are addressing the camera directly. Different members of the group are talking with one another and laughing like they're not being filmed at the moment. It's like in between takes or something like that, I guess is what it's supposed to resemble. And then that bomb.

From the bus, it actually goes off, and that's the real end. But nobody gets hurt. Then we see some more credits rolling, and the last song we hear on the way out is Lady is a Vamp.

Jon (22:58)
That was one wild ride. That's Spice World.

Mark (23:03)
An official motion picture soundtrack was not released for this film, so the band's second studio album, Spice World, from 1997, was heavily promoted and served as the film's soundtrack. It's also important to note that the only song from Spice World not to appear in the film is Move Over.

So let's take a look at Spice World and we'll go through the 10 tracks that are here and see what we got. First up, Spice Up Your Life.

Jon (23:35)
Obviously one of the Spice Girls hugest biggest hits. It carries the album. It carries the movie after wannabe It's probably their best well-known song. It's got a really good column response to it Colors the world spice up your life, you know column response the whole way through great crowd interaction That's kind of a bit of a Latin feel to to certain points throughout the song it's a very strong intro to the album and It's the keyboard track on it's really really catchy, you know it and people have said ha see ya hold tight, know since

.

Mark (24:07)
Next up, stop.

Jon (24:10)
I've always kind of liked this one. It has more of a 60s Motown feel to it. I think it's one of their best. It was another huge, huge single for them with an insanely catchy chorus. And it's a nice good breakdown too in the middle of it. know, catchy song, fun song, one of their better moments.

Mark (24:26)
too much.

Jon (24:28)
This is the one that opens the movie and is over the credits with a sort of James Bond 60s type of vibe to it. It's a ballad, more R &B style. It's kind of repetitive, has kind of a long outro. It's kind of predictable. It's fine.

Mark (24:42)
Up next is Saturday Night Divas.

Jon (24:45)
This was, I looked it up, this was actually never a single. I kind of thought it might have been. It's got a good intro, the verse is a little, but you know, the chorus is all right. It's four minutes and 25 seconds. And I think that's, I think they could have cut this down to three minutes and it would have made for a stronger song.

Mark (25:01)
Never give up on the good times.

Jon (25:04)
Never Give Up On The Good Times is very similar to Break My Stride, a 1982 song by one hit wonder Matthew Wilder. As soon as you hear the chorus your brain starts filling in the other words. It's basically word for word. So lifted that from a one hit wonder, but it captures the vibe of the album and the Spice Girls pretty good.

Mark (25:23)
Move over.

Jon (25:23)
So this is the one that wasn't featured in the movie, but there's a big connection to it, however, because this was part of the girls Pepsi Next Generation campaign. And this is one of the reasons why the Spice Girls were everywhere in the world. They had a huge marketing deal with Pepsi. So basically acted almost like a promo campaign for this movie for them. They had commercials and everything rolling the time. I remember seeing the commercials on TV, but this is the full version of the song. And I don't know, there's parts where they're trying to rap. It doesn't come out that great.

It definitely feels like a Pepsi commercial in the middle of the record. I get that's how business was back then, you had to include it, but you know, it's just a soft drink jingle. What else can I say about it?

Mark (26:03)
next is do it.

Jon (26:06)
I wrote here, this one's okay, inoffensive. I don't think I'd ever heard it before a couple days ago. It's kind of filler on track seven, four minutes long, unacceptable. I don't know, it's okay.

Mark (26:19)
nine.

Jon (26:22)
We have a bit of a scratching DJ intro and then it just kind of goes into nothing. So next song.

Mark (26:30)
longest song on the album, just over five minutes, Viva Forever.

Jon (26:35)
This is a much better, much well-known song by the Spice Girls. was a fairly large hit. It has a flinko guitar kind of riff to it. It's kind of like a Spanish-y sort of pop ballad, I guess you would say. Reminds me of La Isla Bonita by Madonna back in the 80s. Spice Girls didn't break a whole lot of new ground. Each one of these songs I hear, okay, that's ABBA, that's this one hit wonder, that's Madonna. So yeah, the pattern continues with that one.

Mark (27:00)
it out, the lady is a vamp.

Jon (27:03)
and then we go in completely different direction. It's more of a jazz 30s style, know, speakeasy type of track. The lyrics are basically all about them, and their different personalities, but that's kind of cheesy, but that's who they are. And I think it closes the album out in a pretty good way.

Mark (27:22)
looking at the critical reception of Spice World. Spice World has 35 % on its tomato meter and 45 % on its popcorn meter. That's not a great showing. Currently has a 3.8 out of 10 on Internet Movie Database.

Critics have largely panned this film upon its release. Some things that were seen them cite a lack of cohesive plot, weak acting performances, and a reliance on inside jokes and celebrity cameos. I gotta say, all those three things are pretty accurate.

The film did not win any awards. Well, at least not any good awards. It actually won a few and was nominated for several, mainly the Golden Raspberry Awards and the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. So I guess you don't want your film associated with those ones.

Jon (28:13)
Although it didn't seem to affect their popularity at the time. I saw it in the movie theatre. I don't really remember much about the scene. I do remember I was only one of two people, myself and my date, that were the only people at the screening. But I mean, think the Spice Girls then went on to have their own personal issues and problems and disbanded shortly after that, willing to reform years later. So even though this movie, I mean, hey, three out of 10 on IMDB, 3.8, sorry, that's probably about right. I don't want to be, you know,

Maybe I enjoyed it little bit more than that, I mean, it is just, they only had 14 days to film it and it shows.

But for everything we look at here, whether it's loved, hated, what the case may be, we scoured the internet, my brother scoured the internet to find a one-star review. But this time, rather than find some person with some weird handle on a message board, we found a one-star review from a very major source.

Mark (29:05)
This is from January 23rd, 1998. It was featured in the Chicago Tribune. The author is Gene Siskel, so one of the most famous movie critics of all time. This is part of his Flix Picks article series.

Mark (29:24)
The of the review is, The Girls' World, Nothing New, One Star.

Our Flick of the Week is Spice World, in which moviegoers are introduced to the Spice Girls. The so-called Prefab Five, a handful of young singers who have been assembled in a triumph of marketing over music, much like the Monkees a generation ago.

The form of the movie is a journey through a few days in their life as they prepare for their first major concert, a concept used by other rock groups in their debut films, most notably The Beatles and A Hard Day's Night. But neither The Spice Girls nor their movie is in that class.

Instead of Cheeky Beetle's behavior, sparkling wit, and a filmmaking style that pushed limits in glorious black and white, the Spice Girls in Spice World sit about in assorted rooms and trash one another's pop images as the ingenue, the clothes-horse, the rebel. The result is tiresome and a blown opportunity to launch the group to an entirely new audience. And I suspect those who are already fans

will learn nothing new about their, in quotes, girl power heroes.

Jon (30:44)
Well that was most certainly our most highest profile or one star review we've had yet here on the theatre to this date. He's spot on on a lot of things. I will make one or two little corrections though. The Spice Girls were not the Monkees. They were a legitimate pop band that already had an album out before they ever made a movie. ⁓ As well as, I mean I don't think they're trying to be the Beatles. I think it was loosely based on the Beatles but obviously they're not the Beatles. And I don't think they were trying to expand their audience as much as capitalize on the massive audience that was already out there.

And we've gotten so many comparisons in this movie already to A Hard Day's Night. We haven't tackled that one yet here in the theatre. If you'd like to hear me and Mark discuss Hard Day's Night, let us know and we'll put on the list of things we're gonna do.

Mark (31:24)
So even though it was critically dismissed at the time in 1997 and 98, Spice World has since been reevaluated. It's now considered a cult classic. Obviously that is through the lens of comedy, I would have to say. So some things that we're seeing here, it's unapologetic embracing of 1990s pop maximalism that is definitely showcased here.

This is all things 90s pop to the extreme. It's commentary on celebrity culture. Definitely the focus on the paparazzi trying to do a smear campaign against them. Just even the different celebrity cameos you have going on in this movie. It's definitely a celebrity culture kind of stew going on here. And it's a time capsule of Brit pop and girl power. So that was a big deal in the mid to late 90s. And that is definitely on display here.

Jon (32:18)
I think that looking back on Spice World,

Yes, it's very much a time capsule that can be the perfect way to describe this This is a slice of 1998 to the extreme as they would say then next gen or whatever Buzzwords were thrown around at the time, but I mean, I remember the spice girls phenomena. I still remember the spice girls You know, they still are very popular to this day So it wasn't so much a fact it did endure and people still love that group and the girl power slogan something you hear all the time these days So I think despite how bad parts of this movie are I think it does have

a of cultural importance and I'm sure there's a group of people out there that absolutely love this film. ⁓ I like just the sheer fact of what is this wacky thing I am watching and sometimes I'm in the mood for that. If you like a cult movie, if you like things that are so bad they're good, Spice World might be for you.

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