A new spy reviewer has come in, and they chose the name "Less Than Zero". Well that's damn hard to write about in my traditionally obnoxious way, so I thought hard about it. I mean "Less Than Zero" is another way of saying Sub-Zero, who was a lame villian in Arnold's Running Man film! But I don't think the spy in question would like that, so they will be known simply as, "Less Than Zero" Meanwhile the film they reviewed was SPICE WORLD, which I ordinarily wouldn't be covering, but since the Spice Girls are my neighbors in the Entertainment Weekly Power Listings, wellllll here ya go...
Last night I received passes to the U.S. premiere of SPICE WORLD. For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, it's the movie that presents a fictional look at the average week in the life of the Spice Girls. The truth of the matter is, the five of them are very good. They are fun, full of energy, and most importantly of all, they can act (even if they are just playing exaggerated versions of themselves.) Unfortunately, the hired "actors" that surround them are just awful. So while I was expecting to see actors slumming to help their 5 idiot stars, it turns out the 5 idiots rise above the trash they've been given to work with.
To quickly educate those who don't know, we have Sport Spice, Posh Spice, Baby Spice, Sexy Spice and Scary Spice. They all come to represent very narrow female architypes. Sport Spice dresses in athletic wear and is a fitness buff. Posh Spice usually always wears a strapless black dress and never smiles. Baby Spice sucks on a lollypop, sleeps on a bed full of stuffed animals, and gets out of trouble with her innocent smile. Sexy Spice dresses trashy and has...let's just say a lot of cleavage. Scary Spice is black, with a pierced tongue and an outrageous fashion sense.
At it's best the film skewers their image while promoting it at the same time. Baby Spice tells a man he can't sleep with her because with all the stuffed toys on her bed, there's just no room for him. Posh spice has to debate, "Should I wear the blck Gucci strapless, or the black Gucci strapless." Thier tour bus is tremendous and looks like Austin Powers' shag pad. Another witty moment has the girls, bored with their image, dress up as each other. They're always on and ready to entertain. There's also a lot of songs, including 4 performances pieces by my memory. Their new material is even better than the ones that have been clogging up the airwaves all year.
The background plots are painful to sit through. Starting at the bottom we have a documentary crew who wants to cut through the hype and show the real girls. They're never funny, and always annoying. Another plot has a gossip magazine trying to dig up dirt. No laughs there. A third story has George Wendt as a Hollywood producer and Mark McKinney (Kids In The Hall) as a screenwriter trying to come up with a movie idea involving the girls. This generated no laughs, except one, and it's the best scene of the movie. We see the girls as espionage agents (called Spice Force Five) and they each use have special abilities. we get a terriffic MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE parody with Sport Spice and Sexy Spice (master of disguise) jumps into a phone booth and transforms into Bob Hoskins -- who walks out of the booth, approaches the camera and proclaimes, "Girl Power!"
The film is full of cameos: Elton John, Elvis Costello, Meatloaf, and Roger Moore, who plays a record company executive that says things that make no sense and is always seen petting a different animal. Richard E. Grant plays the girls manager, and it's obvious he got the job because of his fearless hamming in HUDSON HAWK. He isn't given much to do, and by the end, he goes from sniviling to just outright mean.
The plot is as random as it comes. It literally seemed like they were writing the script as they went along, and the first third is especially painful. Then as the adventures pile up the level of humor improves The girls are visited by aliens, perform a concert in Italy that's interrupted -- against their wishes -- by half-naked men, a flashback shows what they were like before the fame, and a fantasy dance lesson marches them military-style to an obstacle course...which Posh Spice walks past so as not to dirty her dress. It all winds up with a very funny bus chase to a concert appearance which is also very well staged.
Can I recommend the movie? Absolutely not, and it's not that I don't like the Spice Girls. I own the CD and think they're fun. So I was glad when they more than held their own in the movie. Unfortunately, they weren't given enough humorous moments and too many lame ones. The movie needed more of a Wayne's World touch. I think if you want to see it, you're gonna see it, and you're probably gonna like it. If you don't want to see it, there's nothing that will change your mind (unlike Howard Stern's movie from earlier thsi year, PRIVATE PARTS, which was better than you would expect). This will probably sell well on video if they get it out before the phenomenon fades, and it'll probably pop up frequently on MTV. As an overall movie, I would have to give it 1.5 stars...but it's not their fault.
