Posted 2 hours agoSubscribe to Screen Time NewsletterCaret DownAre You There, God? It's Me And My Bestie, Trying To Watch "Spice World: The Spice Girls Movie"If you think it's on streaming, available for purchase, or literally anywhere else...trust those who learned the hard way.by by Kayleigh SchweikerBuzzFeed Contributor, by Melissa BobergBuzzFeed ContributorFacebookPinterestLink Being 5 years old in suburban New Jersey brought its own unique suite of challenges. Those included, but were not limited to: a whopping 12-year age gap between me and a driver's license, an unrequited crush on a boy in my preschool class, and a babysitter who "hated kids." Real quote. Kayleigh Schweiker Me at age 5 experiencing these real struggles. How fab? For those unfamiliar (SHAME ON YOU!), Spice World: The Spice Girls Movie, is many things: a musical comedy; a cult-classic representation of the "Cool Brittania" era; an ode to girl group trailblazers; a venture into the golden rays of heaven. Inspired by the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964), the film is basically all of my favorite adjectives: kitschy, campy, and spicy, just to name a few. Avalon / Getty Images Plus, the film includes a brief superhero arc, which just so happens to be one of my favorite nouns. Fragile Films , PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Get you girls who can do it all! Amidst the nights spent with said babysitter (a young teenager who embodied the early 2000s phenomena of indie sleaze...kind of an icon, TBH), one memory prevailed - besides, of course, them mentioning their hatred for kids as they sat at the top of my family's staircase on the phone with their ex - a shared obsession with Spice World: The Spice Girls Movie. Fragile Films , PolyGram Filmed Entertainment The menu page should tell you all you need to know. After the opening credits, 5-year-old me was on the edge of my seat. I watched in awe as the Spice Girls journeyed toward the final performance of their European tour, a show at London's iconic Royal Albert Hall. Jmenternational / Getty Images And while the film is not necessarily acclaimed for its acting, as director-in-the-movie Martin Barnfield, played by George Wendt, mentions, "Did anyone care if Marilyn Monroe could act?" Fragile Films , PolyGram Filmed Entertainment No Marilyn slander in this house, please. Though the movie was released in 1997 and lived out its glory days well before the turn of the century, its story and charm were immortalized in my 5-year-old body. Though years of life, experiences, and the class divide stood between us, I felt close to the Spice Girls. Like Posh Spice, I yearned for my peers to acknowledge that I was more than just a Juicy Couture tracksuit. Like Sporty Spice, I loved an electric bike. And like Scary Spice, I, too, normally wore my spacesuit to rehearsal with my five-part girl band. Fragile Films , PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Perhaps it was the scene in which the Spice Girls take two young, sweepstakes-winning girls out on a boat ride on the River Thames. Perhaps it was the charismatic four-minute-long ad lib during the final credits of the film. Perhaps it was simply the only source of entertainment that my babysitter - who, as a reminder, hated me and my kind (children) at large - provided during the long hours spent together. But before I knew timestables, I knew that, with due certainty, Posh Spice would decide between "the little Gucci dress, the little Gucci dress, or...the little Gucci dress" (spoiler alert: she chooses the little Gucci dress) at 0:06. At 0:55, the entirety of the Spice Girls would lose their balance on a motorboat. And at 0:45, a bald photographer would appear from the bowels of the Spice Girls' toilet in a paparazzi-fueled effort to snipe photos of the girls sleeping, in a scene akin to my worst nightmare as a young, pop star-obsessed kindergartner. Fragile Films , PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Although I was almost a decade late to the party, it was official: I had contracted chronic Spicemania. And I wore that badge with both pride and honor. Ron Davis / Getty Images Once I joined Twitter, I immediately made this photo my header image. Feeling nostalgic! As for my friends, they had become accustomed to hearing me gab about Spice World for over a decade - but every time I tried to find a digital version of the movie on streaming, it was nowhere to be found (a woe I shared with the Reddit community). So, when my bestie Melissa gifted me a DVD version of the film for my 23rd birthday, I was gobsmacked. We were officially in friend love! But still I had to know: how did she possibly end up finding it?! @Kacuno / Via reddit.com The SpiceGirls reddit forum: a place of safety for me. Record scratch - Melissa here. Kayleigh turned 23 on June 29, 2023. About a month before that, she and I had moved out of our apartment in Boston - the apartment in which we had spent a lot of (i.e., all of) our time in our living room, doing crafts, YouTube pilates, and watching every reality T