I’ll tell ya what I want what I really, really want. I want to know if people dislike the Spice Girls because they’re a passing fad bound for retro radio, or if they hate these five English condiments because they know they’re a flash in the pan, taking advantage of their fame while it lasts.

Now that that’s off my chest and my credibility spirals down the sewer I’ll try to explain a little why this movie isn’t a cinematic triumph by any means but more of a simplistic narrative in campy mediocrity.

The story line is not new. In a pseudo-documentary kind of way, we follow a popular musical act through its hectic few days before an upcoming, grandiose live performance.

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Through these few days, the audience (which included myself and a horde of Girl Scouts) watch the five Spices sing at various live performances, change clothes a million times, almost break up because of a malicious tabloid editor and travel all over London in their private, double-decker Spicebus. And this is a movie?

Well, during all this, I have to admit I laughed out loud quite a few times just at the way Melanie Chisholm (Sporty), Melanie Brown (Scary), Emma Bunton (Baby), Geri Halliwell (Ginger) and Victoria Adams (Posh) made fun of themselves, their lives and everyone around them.

One particular instance is during a rehearsal for an Italian television show. Ginger turns to Scary and points to one of the muscle-bound and scantily clad male models’ groin bulges. Do you think it’s real? she asks. No, Scary says. It just looks like a couple of rolled up socks.

It’s not so much what they’re saying as how they say it. And that goes for the whole movie. There is a ton of style (and cleavage; I think it should have been called Spice Racks) being shoveled out every minute but no substance which doesn’t say much for the five personalities being exploited here.

The cameos and star support add a little flavor to Spice World with Bob Geldoff, Bob Hoskins and Elvis Costello among the funnier appearances. Roger Moore’s needless role as a wordy record executive played off the James Bond jokes a bit too much, but Richard E. Grant (The Player) was perfectly cast as the girls’ neurotic manager, Clifford.

Kim Fuller (The Tracy Ullman Show) is credited with brewing the script, but it was the Spice Girls especially Posh’s rich girl snobbery who bled life into this movie and made it likable.

And there is no help from Bob Spiers’ direction, which is almost nonexistent. He almost blatantly rips off the three feature-length Beatle films. The media party banter in this film is all too familiar to A Hard Day’s Night, and the Spicebus is about as accommodating to the group as a whole as The Beatles’ apartment in Help.

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Spice World isn’t going to make a run at any Oscars, but there are some legitimate laughs and you don’t even have to be a 10- to 14-year-old girl to get them.

Directed by Bob Spiers.

Written by Kim Fuller.

The Spice Girls The Spice Girls

Clifford Richard E. Grant

Film Producer George Wendt