S Club: Seeing Double review

The Spice Girls can't get a reunion together, the manufactured pop tarts of various reality TV behemoths are haemorrhaging contracts and Britney's snogging/swilling/smoking her way round every party in town. So you've got to wonder who the hell S Club's synthetic, distinctly whiffy fromage is aimed at.

The plot hardly matters, but it goes something like this: complaining about working too hard, S Club are left contemplating a new set of woes when a mad scientist clones them. What to do? Why, go after their doppelgängers and retrieve their careers, of course...

Bouncing between embarrassingly atrocious acting and energetic-but-shoehorned-in sing-songs, Seeing Double makes Spice World look like a masterpiece. That it's lazy, insulting and painfully inept is pretty much a given - - it's the unintentional irony that sticks in the gullet.

After all, how can audiences swallow a tale that bewails the cloning of pop stars when it's produced by cynical music factory 19 Management and features a cameo from cash cow du jour Gareth Gates? Shameful.