It's a Spice World After All

Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures The Spice Girls hit the big screen: (from left) Victoria, Mel C., Geri, Mel B. and Emma, aka Posh, Sporty, Ginger, Scary and Baby Spice.

All right, fine, so you hate the Spice Girls. Get over it.

I know as well as the next guy the feeling of distaste that grinning pop phenomenons can inspire. There was a time when I railed on the Girls even more than the New Kids and Debbie Gibson combined. They do seem, and to an extent are, a manufactured product. To call their music mediocre is to give them a compliment.

But the Spice Girls have their appeal - basically, they're cartoon characters. Sporty, Scary, Baby, Ginger and Posh: if you never heard of them before, they'd sound like Saturday morning fare. Maybe a young group of detectives, each with a special talent, maybe the next generation of Power Rangers. And like a good cartoon or kid's show, the Spice Girls are funny. Their very existence is funny, if you think about it.

If you write off the Spice Girls' movie, "Spice World," simply because you don't like their music (likely), or because you're annoyed by their seeming ubiquity these days (also likely), you're making a big mistake. Because "Spice World" is funny.

Of course, there's the question of your sense of humor. Observe the following list: The Monkees (TV show), The Beatles' movies ("A Hard Day's Night" and "Help"), "Spinal Tap," "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "Absolutely Fabulous." If any or all of the above represent your idea of "funny," you will like this film.

Just like The Monkees did back in the day, the girls get into one wacky predicament after another, working with a cast of characters who are equally cartoonish. Richard E. Grant is the group's highly eccentric, wildly dressed, overly-anxious manager. Richard O'Brien of "Rocky Horror" fame plays a sinister, elusive villian, and Roger Moore takes the role "The Chief," hilariously parodying the James Bond films for which he is so well known. Stroking a persian cat, or a rabbit, or whatever other animal is at hand, Moore drops such cryptic words of advice as, "When the speeding melon hits the wall, it's Christmas for the crows."

And parody, along with zaniness, is the order of the day. There's a slew of celebrity cameos, with many of the guests engaging in as much self-mockery as the Girls themselves. Jennifer Saunders pops in, playing off her AbFab persona. Meat Loaf and Elvis Costello both serve as the brunt of harmless jokes. Even Bob Geldof gets the silly treatment.

Throughout the course of the film, we get to see the Spice Girls in a number of offbeat scenarios, a lot of which work (Spice Moms, for one) and a few which don't work as well (like the alien encounter). Most of these are so out there you have to laugh anyway. There's even a scene where the Girls envision the (possibly near) end to their popularity. Basically, they're not defensive people; people laugh at them, they laugh at themselves. You're supposed to laugh. That's the point.

You don't have to be a Beatles fan to enjoy a miniature Paul McCartney running around, or Ringo being chased and painted red by a religious cult; you don't have to be a Spice Girls fan to get a kick out of Emma (Baby Spice) battling karate experts, or Geri (Ginger Spice, or Tacky Spice, as I like to call her) causing a scandal involving the Pope.

Yes, there's the requisite musical numbers, but they had those on "Josie and the Pussycats" too, and the songs are no worse here. The music isn't the point. So, yeah, you can gripe and complain about the Spice Girls and refuse to see their movie out of spite, but I guarantee that years from now, even you will look back on their career and laugh.

So why not get a head start on enjoying those laughs now?

Me, I'm hoping for "Spice: The Series."