Toronto film festival: the actor turned writer-director’s ode to girl groups is a shoddily made and embarrassingly unfunny catastrophe

There were plentiful on-paper delights for certain music fans of a certain generation promised at Toronto’s splashy Friday-night premiere of pop comedy Girl Group. Posed as a tribute to the Spice Girls and the fizzy boom of girl power-fuelled music that came in their wake, its cast includes OG member Mel C, All Saints’ Shaznay Lewis, and Pussycat Dolls’ Ashley Roberts and Nicole Scherzinger while its soundtrack includes Glee-like covers of Destiny’s Child, En Vogue and Fifth Harmony, a feast for those who have recently felt famished. At a time when such music is still sadly rather thin on the ground, save for the manufactured kids pop of Katseye and the often effective yet more boutiquey throwback R&B of Flo, it seemed to be a reminder of how thrilling it all used to be back when such girl-pop supremacy felt impossibly never-ending, a form of nostalgia-bait that many of us could fully get behind.

But there are not enough pandering nods to the past that will get even the most dedicated pop girlie through the five-alarm catastrophe that unfolded for those of us who bravely decided to stay awake (someone in front of me wisely chose the release of sleep within the first 30 minutes). Hailing from Live Nation Studios, also behind the Weeknd’s roundly ridiculed vanity project Hurry Up Tomorrow, but lit and shot like a pharmaceutical commercial, it barely even feels like a real movie let alone one that should be premiering at such a prestigious festival. It’s the clumsy handiwork of Rebel Wilson, a once in-demand comedy star who has been trying to chase her career highs in the years since. In a theoretically admirable move, she’s moved behind the camera to take control and reintroduce the kind of broad comedies she used to be a part of before they faded from the mainstream. Her directorial debut, a cheap and cheerful adaptation of Australian stage musical The Deb, was ultimately best known for being the subject of a nasty and prolonged court case, but it showed us how Wilson saw herself as a film-maker and which of her films she was most eager to relive *coughs* Pitch Perfect *ends cough*. Girl Group sees her return once again to that territory – female friendship, musical numbers, unfriendly competition – but with even lesser results.

Girl Group is premiering at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution

The 51st edition of the Canadian festival will also feature world premieres starring Taron Egerton, Amanda Seyfried and Chase Infiniti

World premieres of films led by Helen Mirren, Seth Rogen and Chris Rock lead the lineup for this year’s Toronto film festival.

The September festival, taking place after the Venice film festival, has previously seen the premieres of Oscar-winning movies such as Green Book, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Still Alice, Dallas Buyers Club and Silver Linings Playbook.

The former Spice Girl released new music this week, and fans were quick to point out an unfortunate typo. It’s certainly not the first time it’s happened

Name: Melanie C, christened Melanie Chisholm, who is also known as Mel C and Sporty Spice …

Age: She’s 52.

As she releases a clubby new album, Sweat, the former Sporty Spice answers your questions on her raver days, scouse cuisine and Sex Pistols covers

Your acid remix of Jessie Ware’s Free Yourself was a bit unexpected, I admit. Were you a hardcore raver back in the early 90s? Coopertapes
I absolutely was. I discovered raving on my first holiday without parents, just me and three of the girls I was at college with. This was the first environment I’d been in where I heard house music and everyone was dancing, and really expressing themselves. I was like, “Oh my God, I’ve found my people.” That’s where I got the bug. Then we’d also go to a club in Essex called Berwick Manor. I also remember going to the Cross, which was in King’s Cross. It was such a tiny little window of my late teens because the Spice Girls happened so quickly after it. I’d almost compartmentalised it and left it behind until I started DJing eight years ago.

Once the Spice Girls started and your schedule was much tighter, were you ever able to go out like that again? laurasnapes
Absolutely not. That was the thing, although all of my wildest dreams were coming true through being part of the Spice Girls, real life was put on hold. The schedule was brutal. There was very little time for socialising. Also, you remember those times in the 90s, right? The tabloid media and paparazzi were on you like a hawk. So we were terrified. Anything we ever did was usually published in a newspaper, so in our downtime we tried to keep it low key.

Ex-Spice Girl Sporty is ready to take your questions on everything from her Wannabe days to DJing, triathlons and her ninth solo album, Sweat

Some former girl- and boyband stars spend a lifetime trying to escape the image that made them famous. Not Melanie C. Since the Spice Girls debuted 30 years ago this summer (What’s that sound? Oh, it’s just the unadulterated violence of mortality) she has never shied away from her past as Sporty Spice. Her ninth album, Sweat, leans firmly into it. Led by its gauntlet-throwing title track, these are work-bitch bangers for the gym, the dancefloor – inspired by her pre-Spice raving youth – and quite possibly the bedroom, sung by a triathlon fiend who forged a reputation as a world-renowned DJ.

You can ask Melanie about her solo career – she’s the only Spice Girl still making music – or anything else when she sits for the Guardian’s reader interview. Perhaps her new love of the intensive competitive workout Hyrox, what the departure of Mo Salah means for her beloved Liverpool FC, why 90s nostalgia has taken over social media, whether tabloid culture is any less cruel than it used to be or how it can possibly be three decades since Wannabe changed the world.