S Cloned party

The pop group S Club were prefabricated, so to speak, not organic. They were grown to fit the market, rather than discovered by the fans.

So there is a certain ironic appropriateness, that partly redeems a tiresome group of kids, in a story based on the idea that an unscrupulous scientist in California has cloned an identical set of S Clubbers and is marketing them as the authentic telly performers.

The original group wake up in their Barcelona hotel, dazed and bewildered to find "themselves" performing live in LA. The advantage is that the clones do as they are bid, rehearse till they drop, are always on time and need only one toilet break a week.

A movie that obviously hates its stars can't be all bad, and S Club: Seeing Double has its moments, particularly at the end, when the originals find themselves sharing dinner round a table where everyone from the Pop Hall of Fame has been cloned, including Elton John and Michael Jackson, and reduced to a state of robotic servility. Why not clone George W Bush, the villainous Clonemaster is asked, and answers: "Would you prefer to see him or Britney Spears come out of the growth chamber naked?"

Somewhere, buried within the adolescent yammering that passes for chart-topping performances in the record industry these days, is a more cynical movie rooted in a healthy hatred of the merchandise it flogs to kids when the hormones are raging, and which says that the only thing distinguishing these purpose-built puppet pop stars from their body-stealing clones is their possession of a human belly-button.

S Club: Seeing Double
Cert: certPG