The songs aren’t particularly imaginatively staged and you’ve heard them a million times before so don’t watch just for the songs, although I did enjoy their cover of Gary Glitter’s ‘Leader of the Gang’ (who did a cameo in the film which they had to awkwardly edit out) and there’s a couple of minor fun songs like ‘Never Give Up on The Good Times’.
What you should watch it for is some excellent cameos. Meat Loaf as their tour bus driver; Roger Moore as their manager’s manager The Chief, spouting immortal philosophy such as ‘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’. There’s many more but I’ll leave that to give you something to look forward to.
Richard E Grant as their neurotic manager is great fun as the girls run rings around him- such is girl power! It might not be the best use of his talent but seeing as the film has no plot, it needs someone who can act.
The acting of the Spice Girls is abysmal, with Geri and Mel B being the worst offenders. Only Victoria does not completely embarrass herself. Warning: if you do not find the Spice Girls fun or charming, this will not change your mind. If anything, you’ll be more irritated.
I won’t even bother describing the plot; there’s a bizarre metafictional element as two American filmmakers plan to make an awful film about the Spice Girls whilst acknowledging that they can’t act. The audience aren’t being cheated; they’re in on the joke that this is a cash grab.
There’s some frenetic flashbacks, skits and generally bizarre scenes heavily reliant on the girls’ charm, which is manufactured to an inch of its life, as was the band. Still, give in to the madness as writer Kim Fuller (brother of the band’s manager Simon) concocts random scenes of nonsense and throws in a host of cameos and characters in the hope that something will stick.
Jools Holland in a cameo as a music director has a line that basically sums up my review: ‘Okay, girls, that was absolutely perfect without really being any good at all’.