Director: Harmony Korine
Running time: 92 minutes
Rating: 2/5 stars
This movie is billed as a dark comedy. Dark, yeah. Comedy? I did not laugh once. But girl power amped to the max? Plugged-in aplenty. Edgy and moody, ‘Spring
Breakers’ eventually girl-overpowers itself. This is a movie parents need to see before they consent to financing a spring break trip for their kids. Maybe that’s what director Harmony Korine wished for ‘Spring Breakers’ to be – a cautionary tale for parents by way of a statement on the hedonism/entitlism of today’s youth . Of course, a cautionary tale for parents usually works in the opposite manner for their kids.
I would never have considered going to this movie after watching the trailer. Surely I’d already seen this movie – hasn’t everyone? Then I saw that ‘Spring Breakers’ was screening at one of local indie theaters. Whoa, really??? Maybe I had not seen this movie before. Maybe there was something to the hype. Well, no. Just because something is a stylized gangster movie, with bountiful booty, does not make it an entertaining venture.
Four college friends, Faith (Selena Gomez), Brit (Ashley Benson), Cotty (Rachel Korine, wife of director Harmony) and Candy (Vanessa Hughes) have managed to save over $300 since the school year began for a trip to spring break in Florida. This is not nearly enough, so Brit, Cotty and Candy decide to rob a restaurant while Faith is at a prayer meeting. The three girls then carry out the plan, busting up a restaurant with a small sledge hammer, and using a squirt gun to scare the bejeezus out of patrons (“pretend it’s a video game,” they tell themselves) as they rob them. Oh, yeah, they also burn the El Camino they stole from a professor and used as the getaway car. Back in their dorm room, the girls clue in Faith about why there is a pile of money on their bed. Despite being a devout Christian, Faith casts aside her, uh, faith, and joins her friends for the journey to St. Pete. Once there, the girls travel by scooter on a non-ending journey of porn star-like revelry. Until the police bust up a cocaine party the girls have joined and haul them to jail – clad only in bikinis, naturally. The local judge admonishes them, and drops some of the more serious charges, before sentencing them to further hang out in their bikinis for a few days in jail. While in court, local rapper and degenerate drug dealer Alien (James Franco) is seen taking in the proceedings with his twin-brother henchmen. Later, the girls are bailed out by Alien because he “sees something in them.” That’s when their luck really goes bad.
Alien convinces the girls to hang out with him. Two of them eventually wise up and take a bus home (never to be heard from again – huh?). The two remaining girls increasingly prove themselves as budding sociopaths, to ride out the storm that’s brewing with their new ménage a trois pal Alien. Right up to and then past the point where they take on Alien’s boyhood best friend and current drug-czar rival Big Arch (Gucci Mane).
The implausibility meter on this movie is constantly in the red zone. No cops are ever on their trail for the loud, audacious crimes they commit. They rarely, if ever, need food or sleep, although the cocaine may have something to do with that. In fact, they just drive away from their crimes and into a cheerless future. The T & A is luridly constant, so much so, that the cliché about “seen one, you seen ‘em all” took hold in my brain. Not even watching numerous girls perform fellatio on popsicles raised an eyebrow after watching kids trash hotel rooms, attack beer bongs with abandon, take countless alcohol showers and shoot the crap out of people and objects. Turns out I had seen the film long ago and it was called ‘Natural Born Killers’.
There are some good things going on here. Franco, barely recognizable in his cornrows and dental grills, is instantly believable as Alien, and is the energy that drives the film from the halfway point on. The score, a rotating mix of hip hop and Tangerine Dream-inspired synth pop served well to keep me from nodding off, not an easy task when there are naked women all over the place and gun shots echoing through the theater. And the film, shot in a moody, somewhat experimental blending of slow-mo and normal speed that draws in a viewer, is at least noteworthy. Yet this will be a movie well-loved by many, party-loving youths, then deservedly forgotten.
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For More Information Visit:
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http://www.movieweb.com/movie/spring-breakers
http://www.springbreakersfilm.com
http://www.springbreakersmovie.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2101441/combined
