21 Perfect Galentine’s Day Movies

Screengrab via Columbia Pictures.

Spice World

It’s easy to write this film off as a silly girlhood fascination, or as a vapid money-making machine overstuffed with glitter, lollipops, fancy outfits, and fantasies of fame. But you know what? If this movie is anything, it is PROUDLY all of those things and also much more because this movie is high art and Alan Cumming is in it and so is Meatloaf and girl power is literally built right in, so shut it down with the negativity and open your heart up to the Spice or SEE YOURSELF OUT!!!!

The plot is relatively thin: the girls are out on tour (on their tour bus which is likely the greatest dream of anyone currently aged 19-28) and are the target of a newspaper magnate who promised to destroy their reputations because they somehow negatively affected his newspaper sales???? Like I said, thin. And kind of unclear. But WHATEVER, there are aliens that come down and touch Ginger’s boobs and also many very great performances and also a kind of maybe hypothetical bomb-on-a-bus chase and the birth of a baby!!!!!!!! This movie encompasses the full spectrum of humanity DO NOT @ ME!!!!!!! Really, what makes this movie great is the self-awareness and reflexivity that is so often lost on these kinds of films. The jokes we’d all make about the Spice Girls? They make them first, and they make them themselves, and they make them better than we could’ve. The absurdity of their fame isn’t ignored, the stereotypes are played up with a surprisingly astute irony, and the in-jokes between them and about them are shared with their fans. Of course, watching this as an 8 year old, none of that matters. But watching this now? Let’s just say a CERTAIN WRITER OF THIS POST NAMED TINA WARGO earnestly attempted to write about this masterpiece of a movie in a film class during her senior year of college. Please please don’t @ me.

Best lady moment: Besides every single moment, there’s a montage during which the girls dress up as each other, complete with shocking spot-on impressions and us getting to see Sporty in heels and a real tight dress and Ginger in sweats. And, it turns out, THAT is what we want, what we really really want.