Spice World

Rating: ***
Date Seen: 1998-02-07

When I told my friends I was thinking about going to see Spice World, they reacted with horror and dismay, attempting to persuade me to do otherwise. After all, the Spice Girls known to be are the antithesis of sincerity, musical innovation, and good taste. But, because I consider myself a student of popular culture, the media, and modern society, I decided it was my obligation to go and see this movie. Besides, I must admit that I was curious. What could a movie starring the Spice Girls possibly be about? What would the plot be? Would there even be a cohesive plot, or would it just be nothing but out-takes and hype to feed frenzied fans? I couldn't stand not knowing.

Ten minutes into the movie, I was wishing I had listened to my friends. The movie opened to shots of the foolish five doing a rather poor job of lip-syncing to their own vocals. (or were the vocals really their own?) I had also been treated to tacky, disjointed scenes of the Spice Girls rehearsing, meeting a crowd of fans on the way to their tour bus, and making inane comments to each other about their makeup and clothes. All the while, the cameras kept going back to focus on a couple of filmmakers trying to make a documentary of the Spice Girls. Why? Even if I was a Spice Girls fan, I wouldn't want to keep seeing these dorks who looked like PBS rejects lugging their cameras around in an attempt to document the Spice Girls. Was this just a really bad rip-off of Truth or Dare? Oh well, $4.50 down the drain and a wasted evening, I thought. At least my curiouslty had been allayed.

As the movie went on, though, it started to become funny, in it's own self-deprecating way. When I realized that Spice World was not supposed to be about anything, per se, I started to laugh. The movie is not meant to be taken seriously. Its satiric depiction of the media world is funny enough in and of itself; the fact that it chooses to use itself as the subject of ridicule makes it downright hilarious. If this movie has a central plot focus, it is about a bunch of producers trying to create a movie which would star the Spice Girls. After all, they must capitalize on this and every other commercial success. Their delima is what the movie should be about. (Confused yet?)

The biggest irony of Spice World is that it makes a point of relentlessly poking fun at corporate culture, the very entinty which brought the Spice Girls into being. There is the frantic manager, always appearing to be on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Whenever he tries to muster the courage to confront his boss, the executive, and tell it like it is, he inevitably wimps out. The boss, a nutty caricature of a corporate executive, sits in an oddly decorated room with no visible doors or windows, and communicates only by phone while feeding his pet pig from a baby bottle. There are others, the tabloid owner, the photographer he hires, the movie producers. (All of whom happen to be men. I'll leave it to others to discuss the implications of the movie as it relates to gender.)

At the center of this circus ride the Spice Girls; always carefree, taking life as it comes, seldom thinking about what the world thinks of them. At the same time, they are very fashion-conscious, full of wise cracks, and often put on aires of cluelessness, and end up getting what they want as a result. Contrasted against a backdrop of media goofballs, who are always falling all over themselves in the game of power and money, the Spice Girls seem to transcend their surroundings.

I think this movie's crappy beginning is intentional, to set itself up to be made fun of. Once I realized that, watching the antics of the Spice Girls and their entourage became light-hearted entertainment.