here we've got a really rare bird : a film so stupid it can't even make fun of itself properly . you know a culture is in trouble when even its trash doesn't stick to your mind . spice world may not be the worst big-name movie ever made -- i'm divided at this point between species ii and money train , with north in the running -- but it's not even a good crummy movie . it's just crummy . i kept begging for a moment of some halfway genuine wit -- a mistake , a sneeze , a sense that they just grabbed something and ran with it instead of staying with the script . no such luck . that script , by the way , plays out like something they scratched onto a soggy cocktail napkin at a producer's party . comparing this movie to a hard day's night would be a sinful mistake . a hard day's night was conceived as a quick exploitation package to cash in on the beatles' popularity , but two things happened : one , the beatles stuck around and became more important than anyone could have guessed ; two , the movie was brilliant . neither exception applies to this film . we get performance segments which are flimsy and witless , padded with revue-type material that doesn't garner a single chuckle , and fistfuls of stuff shoveled in that dates the movie horribly ( like a dumb x-files gag , complete with halogen flashlights ) . the girls are also disturbingly untalented ( again , unlike the beatles ) -- there's five of them bleating away up there , and collectively they don't even add up to one good singer . who are these girls , anyway ? despite their variegated appearances and hairstyles , they're one indistinguishable pulpy blob . what frightens me the most is that like so many other junk-food culture artifacts aimed at the younger set -- the teenage mutant ninja turtles or the power rangers -- there aren't any real individuals in the group . there's just this kind of amorphous , composite personality that they pass around between them , like the three crones in greek legend who all shared one eye . i hate reading a great deal into pop-culture phenomena , but if the spice girls send a message of any kind , it's twofold : that it's better to subordinate your personality to a premanufactured group identity , and that trash not only sells , but aggressively seeks its own level . santayana once bemoaned america's love affair with trash , and he noted that it wasn't the trash that bothered him , but the love . he film's most telling moment : immediately after a performance , someone tells the girls , " that was perfect -- without actually being any good . " imagine that . a moment of genuine insight , in the middle of this movie . maybe there is a god . 
