S Club Seeing Double [DVD]

S Club's Seeing Double will be best remembered as the film that marked the end of the band. Their demise wasn't caused by this film being particularly dire but rather their big-screen outing was the contractual glue, which kept the group together a little longer than they probably wished. Incorporating the standard pop movie themes--a control-freak manager, over-zealous fans and the stresses of living on the road--the film also makes the customary tongue-in-cheek references to the fragility of manufactured pop groups.

Centred around the S Clubbers' shock discovery that clones of the band are touring America, the film tracks the six as they attempt to capture the impostors and their evil creator, Victor Clonemaster. Peppered with some of their greatest hits--including a musical-style version of "Don't Stop Movin'" performed in a prison--their back catalogue is surprisingly under used.

As the group admit in the accompanying interviews, this film is no masterpiece. There are no glitzy special effects and the clones of the six are created by clever camera angles rather than anything more fancy. Like Spiceworld with its Tardis tour bus, all sense of reality and location gets lost during the film. Despite some establishing shots, it's difficult to work out where the action of the film is supposed to be taking place: is it Los Angeles, Barcelona or a set at Elstree? But the need to suspend all sense of reality adds to the fun of the film, and like a Children's Film and Television Foundation production from the 1970s, this turns out to be good, wholesome entertainment, which mixes adventure, fun and irony.

On the DVD: Seeing Double on disc has some exceedingly good value extras, including a fun interactive interview section, which allows you to select (a limited number of) questions to be answered individually by the six. There are comprehensive fact files on the S Clubbers, a photo gallery and a tough interactive quiz too. --John Galilee

Seeing Double is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your pants adventure movie starring chart-topping pop sensation S Club. When the band discover an impostor S Club performing live on TV from Los Angeles they fly to LA where they enter a sinister world of cloning, communal showers and mistaken identities. So fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride, as S Club set about unravelling the Evil Clonemaster's plot to take over the world. And no, your eyes aren't tricking you, you really are Seeing Double...

• Biographies: S Club Facts
  
• Behind the Scenes
  
• Photo gallery
  
• Interviews with the band and crew
  
• Theatrical trailer

DVD Technical Information:

• DolbyDigital 5.1 Surround
  
• Language: English
  
• Subtitles: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish
  
• Running time: 87 minutes
  
• Anamorphic - 1.85:1
  
• DVD9