Dir. Harmony Korine
92 Minutes
Rated R
Known for such controversial films as Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine is no stranger to examining the dark side of American youth. Spring Breakers stars 'Disney Channel' princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, along with Ashley Benson and Korine's real-life wife Rachel, as a group of college girls who want nothing more than to escape their lives and party for spring break. In order to get the travel money, the girls rob a diner with spray painted squirt guns and speed off for some real fun. During their escapades they run into a gold-toothed rapper/hustler named "Alien" (James Franco), and the rest is a slippery downward slope to see how far these girls will sink to "have fun."
I have to admit, the drunken beachside spring break partying on display here is my idea of hell on Earth, so I found it hard to relate to any of the characters' desire to go nuts. But the film is shot incredibly well, and there was almost a poetic tone to it, with lots of artistically repeated lines and shots that gave the film an almost fever dream feel. The sequence early on of the girls robbing the diner was particularly well done, shot entirely from the outside of the building. Later on we see the same sequence, only with the camera placed inside the building, where the aggression feels even more palpable. Also, certain words and phrases are repeated two or three times in a row via voiceover for a haunting, dream-like effect. I'm not sure if these touches add up to a whole lot, but it does leave some room for artistic interpretation.
The girls themselves weren't the best characters ever conceived. Although I'm sure it was done purposefully, most of them were hard to tell apart; two of them have blonde hair and we never learn their names. The only one that stood out was Selena Gomez's character. She starts off as kind of a good religious girl, who may or may not become corrupted by her criminal counterparts. And in a very subtle artistic move her name is FAITH. I don't mind some movies where the main characters are completely horrible people with no redeeming qualities (such as the previously mentioned Gummo), but here I just don't think that giving girls-gone-wild guns was enough to make me care.
Although the girl characters were kind of shallow (not just in their personalities, but in the writing), James Franco's character is probably the best part of the film, and I would rank this performance among his best. Judging from snippets in the trailer, I assumed this would be another typical comedic role from Franco, but it truly was a realistic portrait of this seedy Scarface-loving 'gangster,' who could be intimidating, sad, and funny at the same time. In one scene he is showing off his "crib" to the girls, with stacks of money on the bed and guns plastered on the wall. In an over-the-top dialogue he goes through everything and mentions that he has Scarface on repeat and to look at everything he owns. Although it's not original, 'Alien' is definitely a strange take on the American dream. There's also a great scene between him and Faith, where he tries to get her to stay with him even though she wants to go home. It's a truly sinister scene, and I'd love to see Franco take on more of these offbeat, insane roles.
It's got some stuff to scratch for under the surface, but really this doesn't amount to much more than a Skrillex-laced music video with some half-baked themes about the American dream and today's youth. The ending is totally implausible and subverts the realism we saw beforehand, and although it's short at a mere 92 minutes, it felt a lot longer. There is some cool "filmmaker-y" stuff going on with the camera, and James Franco alone makes this worth seeing, but Spring Breakers was not as thrilling or thought provoking as it should have and could have been.
Rating: C
BONUS - Related Internet Video:
Here's an interview with Harmony Korine that gives some directorial insight on Spring Breakers.
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