SPICE WORLD (Columbia)
If you were to make up a mock Top-40 chart of all the movies ever made featuring pop stars, the Spice Girls' "Spice World" would fit in well below Prince's "Purple Rain" and several notches above Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees' ghastly, overblown "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." "Spice World," directed by Bob Spiers of "Absolutely Fabulous" fame, is at the very least unpretentious, with only one item on its agenda: to sell the Spice Girls in a lavish 93-minute commercial. The group's many detractors may be dismayed to discover the Girls have a winning sense of humor about themselves, their image and their art. To borrow a line from a pop princess of the past, these Girls just want to have fun, and sometimes the good humor they generate is contagious. Although the model for "Spice World" would seem to be the Beatles' film debut "A Hard Day's Night," the film most closely resembles the 1967 obscurity "Good Times," which attempted to launch Sonny and Cher as a big-screen team. The concept behind "Good Times" had the duo enacting fantasies about the kind of movie they'd like to star in, while, in the real world, they negotiated to get out of acting in a picture they knew wasn't right for them. What little plot "Spice World" has consists of filmmakers Mark McKinney and George Wendt pitching script ideas to Clifford (Richard E. Grant) , the Spice Girls' fictitious manager. At the same time, a documentary crew headed by Alan Cumming is trying to get the real story behind the hype, and the quintet of Girls are struggling to balance their loyalty to old friends with the demands of world-wide superstardom. What sets "Spice World" apart from most rock movies is its ambivilent attitude toward fame. Each of the Spices --Baby, Posh, Ginger, Scary and Sporty, and yes, you will be able to identify each of them by the end of the film-- seem to realize Spicemania won't last forever and the inevitable reversal of fortune is coming. "In the old days, it was 'where's our next meal coming from?'," says Baby Spice in one of the film's few quiet moments. "Now, it's 'where's our next single going to?'." Still, this is hardly a scathing expose of the music scene. Much of "Spice World" consists of the Girls' performances of revamped versions of "Say You'll Be There" and "Wannabe," as well as their current tunes, such as the shout-it-out salsa number "Spice Up Your Life" and the endearingly doo-wopish "Too Much." Like the film's comedy, the music is not always consistently good but it is consistently loud. Years from now, "Spice World" will undoubtedly serve as a colorful reminder of a pop phenomenon, and that seems to be all it ever intended to be. "That was absolutely perfect without actually being any good," a music director tells the group after a false start on one of their songs. The same review applies to "Spice World."
James Sanford
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