Wholesome Spice Girls With Release Of Film, Upcoming Tour And Two Multiplatinum Records, Group Certain Of Future

Here they are, finally, crashing in and taking their seats in front of their individual Day-Glo movie posters, 40 minutes late for a news conference.

Add the hour they had already pushed it back and the wait for the Spice Girls is even longer than their 93-minute feature film debut, “Spice World,” which they had come to promote.

“It’s totally my fault!” says Geri Halliwell, the streaked redhead known as Ginger Spice.

They’d blown off other interviews in favor of shopping, but today it’s just sleeping late that has delayed them. Even so, the self-professed health nut of the group, Melanie Chisolm - (Sporty Spice) - is looking none too well for wear due to the beginnings of a stomach bug that later would force the cancellation of a Canadian promotional trip.

Ginger, Sporty and the rest - Emma Bunton (Baby Spice), Victoria Adams (Posh Spice), Melanie Brown (Scary Spice) - are the biggest pop stars around, and their debut was the best-selling album in the United States last year. Although there’s talk (probably wishful) about commercial fallout, no other act has two multiplatinum albums in the current Top 25. The soundtrack to “Spice World” has sold 2 million copies in 10 weeks.

The rock era has seen other girl groups, back to the Crystals, Ronettes and Shirelles. So what makes these British women, aged 22 to 25, stand out in the field of Sweet Sensations, SWV or TLC?

It’s the Barbie Girl come-to-life effect - shapely, pouting, tight clothes in colors so vibrant you think to adjust your set, even in person. At the same time, there are never any boys in sight, no possibility of romantic involvement in this big pajama party. And prepubescent girls are drawn to it as surely as they are to the electric pink of the toy store Barbie aisle.

“Spice World,” the movie, expands upon the action-figure sisterhood by introducing a marvelously souped-up double-decker bus that would be the ultimate Barbie accessory. Even a Wall Street Journal reporter in the room is taken in: “Do you really have a bus like that?”

Those never clued in to Spice Girl mania console themselves with the almost giddy certainty that all this will pass. “Spice World” beats them to the punch with loads of self-deprecating jokes about shelf life.

But even as the worn-out joke about the Spice Girls’ 15 minutes of fame has had far more than its allotted quarter-hour, someone has to bring up the hoary Andy Warhol cliche, as if for the first time.

“I heard the other day, people were saying that to Elvis,” Ginger Spice muses. But, she adds, her voice rising, “even if it ended tomorrow, I feel bloody proud my four friends have come this far! I think that’s an achievement in itself to have done what we’ve done; it’s fantastic. So who cares whether it’s 15 minutes or it’s two?”

Clearly, their demise is not part of their itinerary.

“We’ve got so much to do,” sighs “Baby Spice” Bunton, who turned 22 Wednesday, and spends much of the news conference holding hands with Ginger for support. “We’ve got our whole Spice World tour coming up.”

It’s odd, in the Spice World Masterplan, that a feature film would precede their first concert tour.

But that’s the way it happened for the young women who answered an ad for a new group in London four years ago. After some rehearsals, the story goes, the quintet rebelled and started making their own decisions. Last fall, they fired a second manager, emboldened by their five straight No. 1 singles.

Had they also planned to attract so many young fans?

“When we first started out, I do remember saying I remember when I was 12 years old, I had Madonna,” Ginger says. “I think there was a massive gap in the market. And we saw that.”

“We wanted to appeal to girls, we wanted to reach out to them and say, ‘We feel like this, do you feel the same, too?”’ she goes on.

“We feel very flattered when a 5-year-old likes our music as well, because at the end of the day they’re not corrupted to what’s cool. They don’t conform; it’s a pure kind of flattery: ‘Yeah, we like it because we like it, and that’s it,”’ Ginger says.

“Spice World” is as clean as Disney, with no romantic interests marring the sisterhood. Even the fictional friend having a baby in the film has no man around. The only guy the Spice Girls kiss is Elton John, making a lipstick-stained cameo.

“That’s ‘cause we don’t kiss anyone!” declares Ginger. “Except in our private bedrooms.”

Plus, she says, a little more unconvincingly, “You only have 90 minutes.”

Finally, Scary Spice breaks down under questioning. “Yes! I wanted to have a sex scene with Denzel Washington!”

But she adds, “I’d be longer than 90 minutes.”