WHILE on the subject of English failures, here's another one, only worse still.

Like the Monkees, S Club's pop career has been built around a television show. Those cheeky Americans and the short British one went on to make Head, one weird 1968 trip of a psychedelic movie.

As an Easter extra after four series, the S Club six have been thrown into the lion's den of a film project that is beyond psychedelic. No drugs could account for the bizarre events here, and yes, the director really is called Nigel Dick, erstwhile pop promo maker.

For Dick Lester and The Beatles' movies A Hard Day's Night and Help, now read Nigel Dick and the dippy Seeing Double, another light-hearted musical romp where the band must dig themselves out of a hole, and obey the pop movie rule of never staying in one place for too long.

Written by Kim Fuller, who was equally culpable for the Spice Girls' camp comedy Spiceworld, Seeing Double opens with an evil British scientist (David Gant) trying to impersonate Christopher Lee and Jonathan Pryce while cloning S Club with the ultimate aim of brainwashing children. Cloning? Cynics may have thought they were already clones, set in motion by manager Simon Fuller once the Spice Girls had waned. Brainwashing children? There's nothing new in this Pop Idol era.

In a nursery-level plot, the real S Club are in Barcelona, mob happy at the end of a European trek until they start acting up when their manager tells them the Big World Tour must go on. No, they won't go to America, they say. Send in the clones, say their business suits, working in league with the nutty boffin to make the perfect, uncomplaining manufactured band.

Skint in Spain, they see their replacement band on TV performing in LA, and rush to America and infiltrate their doppelgangers' ranks to set about saving the world from more cynical pop cloning (no chance!). Real and fake S Club look alike, save for the clones having no belly buttons, although Jo from Essex has a bit of a belly.

Jo, Jon, Rachel, Bradley, Tina and Hannah handle the daft plot, corny gags and cheap sets with even less punch than the punchlines. Surprisingly, the musical numbers are as stiff as the recuperating Jo's back, save for a Jailhouse Rock spoof that will do little for Anglo-Spanish relations on the resorts this summer.

Harmless fun? No, charm-less and no fun.

Updated: 09:21 Friday, April 11, 2003