Spice World (1997) Reviews

• Nostalgic...

  passthepopcorn62004-12-21

  When I was seven and this movie came out, it was the biggest thing around. Everyone wanted to be the Spice Girls. After they split up and weren't cool anymore, everyone forgot about the movie. But ho, ho, what's this? Years later, here I am cleaning out my old Disney and Barney videos and stumble across my old friend that I used to watch everyday. Even at my old age of fifteen, never failed to crack me up. Obviously, this isn't meant to be a contender for Oscars. Anyone can see that. But I can't find much to hate about a movie that's practically the visual to go along with the song "Girls just wanna have fun." That's all it is, fun. And a lot of good fun at that. It's just a guilty pleasure, and it's so much fun to watch it with old friends singing into hair brushes and wearing feather boas. You just need to keep in mind that it was publicity for their new record and it's not meant to be one of those heavy movies you over-analyze. Recommendation: This movie is much funner when you watch it jumping up and down on a couch like a seven year old.

  More

• Have Fun with it

  elfgirl_amek2007-06-18

  It was made to be silly. There's nothing in this movie that's meant to offend anyone. It's a silly, fun-loving, harmless movie. I enjoyed it when I was 8 and I still do now at 18. Anyone who takes this movie seriously, needs to relax, have fun, enjoy the goofiness. This movie is one you can enjoy with your friends, family and young children DON'T have to be sent out of the room for inappropriate action. It's silly, remember that. It's supposed to make you laugh! All the girls are young, and the band still together. A few years later, everything fell apart for them. Enjoy the youth and laughter while you can.

  More

• Made me wanna zigga zig, ah!

  Smells_Like_Cheese2004-02-11

  To be a teenage girl when the Spice Girls were around, there was no better time to be 12. I admit it, I was such a fan of the girl power group. How could you not be? Admit it, you say you hated them, but secretly you had a poster of Ginger Spice in your closet. They were cute, they were fun, they were talented and before you knew it they were gone. But for 2 years, it was nothing but girl power! So out of the height of their fame we naturally had to see if the Spice Girls were good for something else and that meant a movie! The Spice Girls made a movie, to show how crazy their lives were at the time and let them just have fun with it and they did spice up our lives real good. The Spice Girls are enjoying their fame, but they become dissatisfied with the burdens of it. A sinister newspaper owner, Kevin McMaxford, is trying to ruin the girls' reputation in order to cash in on the headlines, and even dispatches a photographer to take pictures and tape recordings of the girls. Annoying film director, Piers Cuthbertson-Smyth, who stalks the band along with his crew, hoping to use them as documentary subjects; at the same time, the girls' manager, Clifford, is fending off two overeager Hollywood writers, Martin Barnfield and Graydon, who relentlessly pitch absurd plot ideas for the girls' film. Amid this, the girls must prepare for a concert at the Albert Hall, their biggest performance yet. But between all this craziness, would they even want to continue to sing at the price of their friendships? You'll have to see, but I'm sure you could figure it out. I think a lot of people are a little too harsh on this film, the girls gave it a genuine try. You can tell they just had fun and wanted to do this for the fans. I think there were actually some really funny parts, like when they went through the spice boot camp. The whole last scene where they are going through their action scene in London, it's so random and just a good time. See, what I liked about this film was it's harmless nature. It was made for the fans specifically because we loved them so much. I admit that I'll watch it every once in a while still just to go back down memory lane and it still brings a smile on my face. The songs are so darn catchy, I can't help it. There are some very fun cameos that get a good giggle. The story is very predictable and the movie is over the top silly, but that is what makes it fun. I'm here to defend the film, I think people over analyze things way too much. Sometimes, you can't explain it, but you just want to let go of the real world and spice up your life a little bit. The Spice Girls may never win an Oscar, but they won the world's hearts for 2 short years, the girl power may have fizzled a little, but I'll take a trip down memory lane any time for Spice World. 6/10

  More

• Much better & much funnier than you'd think

  kathco2006-10-28

  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.

  More

• To *HECK* with all the naysayers!

  imdb-99082006-04-02

  SPICEWORLD is a good, enjoyable movie. It is NOT Cinéma Vérité, nor is it supposed to be. You want a deep, poignant movie? A thriller? An action-flick? Watch something else. This movie is a farce, and was intended to be only that, nothing more. You people who didn't like the movie are expecting LORD OF THE RINGS or something, and this will never reach that level. But for a fun, energetic, insane romp with countless nods to classic movies, stars, and actors, this is perfect. The Spice Girls had their time in the limelight and used it to produce essentially a theatrically-released extended music video. If you're old enough to remember M-TV when it was actually JUST a music video channel, this is what SPICEWORLD is (think of the classic Michael Jackson video/movies like THRILLER where it was music and a bit of story tossed in for good measure). Nope, not Oscar™ material by a long shot, but still quite enjoyable. Oh yes... one last thing: I saw this movie on PPV in 1998 and immediately fell in love with it and the Spice Girls. I was 28 then, and even though I'm 36 now, I still enjoy this movie for what it is. Perhaps that's because I'm OLD ENOUGH to know what it ISN'T.

  More