After her disappointing video for "Me Against The Music" - which featured inexplicable product placement for Sbarro and an equally strange goose chase with Madonna through a maze of Venetian blinds - Britney Spears convinced critics (including this one) that the end of her Top-40 reign was nearing. In a matter of months, the warbling schoolgirl would fade into obscurity, with her once ubiquitous name becoming only a sad, nostalgic reference on VH1 game shows.
Fortunately, the 55 hours Spears spent as a loyal, devoted wife in Las Vegas must have refreshed her waning creative brilliance, because the newly released video for "Toxic" is as cool, polished and intoxicating as a chilled can of Sapporo. Just one glimpse of the bedazzled Britney (in one scene, she wears nothing but pasted-on diamonds), and "Crossroads" becomes a distant, effectively repressed memory.
At the start of the single's spastic string accompaniment, the viewer boards a sexed-up passenger jet (Virgin Atlantic it ain't) to find Stewardess Spears shaking her uniformed behind in coach class. Our heroine proceeds to lure an enamored passenger to the plane's cramped bathroom, where she retrieves a presumably poisonous vial of liquid (but not without enrolling in the Mile High Club first). After three minutes and 21 seconds of James Bond-ish antics, Britney envenoms her ill-fated ex-boyfriend - essentially a more handsome, less ghetto, de-afroed version of Justin Timberlake. It's a great plot. Seriously!
Complementing the video are frequent and forgivably unnecessary costume changes. First, there's the naughty stewardess get-up that screams "sexual harassment in the workplace." Then there's that aforementioned diamond "outfit." And don't forget the requisite latex catsuit, made only more bizarre by a red wig of flowing synthetic fiber. Again, these costumes are cool. No, really!
As far as music videos go, "Toxic" is good stuff. Doubt it? Just wait - thanks to Britney's eternal appeal, 69-ing in 747s and poisoning former flames will soon be all the rage!
