Spring Breakers

Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachael Korine

Directed by: Harmony Korine

Rating: ★

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

Interested in seeing an extended music video featuring drug taking gun wielding bikini clad buxom babes as they drink, dance and then descend into delinquently devious deeds? Then Spring Breakers is for you.

They just want to 'find themselves', but instead find trouble...

Don’t expect the movie to make any kind of logical sense though, as it consists mainly of strikingly stylised visuals and a pulsating soundtrack that merges together with repetitive voiceovers and a non-linear narrative structure, the combination of which makes for a discomforting experience. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that I almost vomited from the whole experience: hyper saturated images and ear exploding music, mixed together with sequences of people drinking, smoking, shagging and dancing. I assume that this overwhelmingly intense feeling was the intention of the filmmakers, and if it wasn’t, then perhaps it is time they looked for a new way to make a living.

The film makers give a huge middle finger to the audience who paid to see this trash...

Although I generally liked the heavily systematised use of repetitive phrases and images, it did become slightly obnoxious and annoying. But hey: I think that my Grandma would like it.

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

The quote un-quote ‘storyline’ to Spring Breakers is about four students and their endeavours surrounding Spring Break: an American ritual in which University kids get shit faced in a tropical climate.

Girls just want to have fun...

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

Faith (Gomez), Brit (Benson), Candy (Hudgens) and Cotty (Korine) rob a restaurant to pay to go to Miami for Spring Break, where they party so hard they are arrested. Alien (Franco), a local rapper and gangster bails them out of jail, on the proviso that they then commit crimes for him. Things take a dramatic turn for the worst when another gangster gets involved in the plot, and Alien and his ‘bitches’ take it upon themselves to make sure that nothing and no one will spoil their fun…

Spring Breakers forever bitches indeed…

Vanessa Hudgens as Candy. She's not a nice girl, at all.

It’s a plot so thin that it makes Oz The Great and Powerful look like a well written, well-constructed piece of Oscar bait. But hey: I think that my Grandma would like it.  

But this film isn’t about having a ‘story’. No, it’s about making a point. At least, I hope it is. If it isn’t then there really isn’t any point to this film at all, as it is just essentially a musical montage of girls in bikinis dutty-grinding and brandishing automatic weapons.

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

Franco and Gomez get up close and personal...

I’m trying to squeeze something redeemable out of Spring Breakers, so I’m telling myself that it is in fact a damning indictment of contemporary culture, and not at all just a piece of celluloid that exists only to fulfil scoptophilic pleasure of the male audience members. In amongst the images of tits, arse, drugs, drinking, partying and then gangster lovin’ were some well-crafted colour graded sequences that looked as if at least someonewas taking the film seriously.

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

Every single shot in the movie is either blue or red or pink or green...

On the whole, I generally enjoyed the heavy handed and tacky MTV glossy shots, stylised colourisation and choppy editing, even though it did make me feel queasy. I also respected the fact that the film was (presumably) meant to be a critique of the current culture of boozing and banging, something that really should be addressed. The voiceover is constantly at odds with the pictures being presented, which creates a dissonance that is clever and effective. It’s just a shame that the characters and plot have literally nothing going for them at all, and that the entire film was ironically exploitative and condemning of itself.

But hey: I think that my Grandma would like it.

James Franco is frightfully sleazy, but unlike Oz, this time he is actually meant to be a creepy sex fiend who uses and abuses the women he comes across, and so his demeanour actually works with his horrifically horrible character.  Selena Gomez and the director’s young wife Rachael Korine get some sort of character development, and so can give performances of sorts that don’t just involve them looking seductive or wasted.

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

Franco is once again excellent as a complete sleaze-ball...

I really didn’t like the way in which the two other characters were so morally bankrupt that they were made to look like demons, and were almost transformed into evil supernatural entities by the film’s closing. It was pretty hideous and incredibly strange, and I wasn’t really sure what the director was angling at, unless he just thinks that all women are malevolent. I don’t have a problem with having characters that are wholly horrible bitches, but they were so incredibly two dimensional, as was the plot, that it was hard to take the entire movie seriously. So I didn’t.  Because, essentially, Spring Breakers isn’t actually a movie.

The entire gangster sub-plot really should not have existed, and to be honest, neither should the film. It made its overstated point pretty effectively in the first twenty minutes and so probably should have been a short film or extended music video. It also should have finished with Selena Gomez’s ‘portion’, but sadly it didn’t.

Spring Breakers forever bitches...

Selena Gomez as Faith gets some sort of character development, but not much...

Even though Spring Breakers is probably the shortest film I’ve seen recently, when an hour and a half feels as long as Cloud Atlasand The Hobbit, you know you’re in trouble. But hey: I think that my Grandma would like it.

So in conclusion, Spring Breakers is an art house movie that mashes together images and audio to create a ‘feeling’ rather than a story. The only things you can take home with you from this movie are images of the young cast in bikinis and the memory of a pink pier, a piece of landscape that was by far and away the most memorable thing about the entire film. It is a forgettable, pointless, needless exercise in technical movie making that fails to hit its mark so badly that even its target audience of adolescent boys would be unable to enjoy it.

The girls are naughty, but definitely not nice...

Spring Breakers is a ‘non-movie’ in which nothing really happens, so it was hard to even award it with a rating. Since I had to judge it as a film and not as an art installation, this was a reason why I gave it such a low score. I also rated it harshly because by the end of it I felt like I had fallen into a hole in a schlocky art gallery and had been left to die.

But hey: I think that my Grandma would like it.

SPRING BREAKERS FOREVER BITCHES!!