Spring Breakers

Can someone explain to me why SPRING BREAKERS was in the comedy section of my local department store? I can only imagine how many people saw this movie sitting on the shelf with it's cover portraying Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and James Franco in beach-mode and thought, "Well this movie looks like a fun time! It's like THE HANGOVER for the Disney crowd!" I am, of course, assuming that the majority of people buying movies from my local department stores are fools who aren't familiar with movie ratings or aware of movie reviews. And I'm pretty sure I'm right. Anyway, SPRING BREAKERS is not a comedy and, if it is, I missed something somewhere. This movie is a 90 minute hallucination and a rough one. It centers on four longtime friends: Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson), Cotty (Korine), and Faith (Gomez). Spring Break has arrived and their too poor to leave campus when everyone heads down south to the beaches of Florida for a week of insane debauchery. We receive our first hint that these girls aren't quite right when Candy, Brit, and Cotty decide to rob an all-night chicken shack for their Spring Break funds. From there, it's beaches, booze, and bongs as the girls party it up until their arrested in a narcotics bust when they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Enter Alien…a wannabe gangster who makes his living dealing drugs and robbing spring-breakers. He bails out the girls and enlists them to join him in business, and it all goes nuts from there.

SPRING BREAKERS isn't so much a film as it is an experience. It's a visual journey, popping with neon color and thumping with an electronic soundtrack, that won't settle with most average viewers. I had a friend that wanted to see this movie purely for the bikini-clad stars but I warned him against it because I didn't want to hear the eventual complaints that he had no idea what was going on. While I'm totally cool with helping others experience new movies and different styles of filmmaking, I know there's a line and, in this instance, that line is filmmaker Harmony Korine. There is a story present in SPRING BREAKERS but it's done in such a unique and mind-bending fashion that I guarantee it'll turn a lot of people off. Personally, I enjoyed it. After I first watched it, it didn't take some processing on my part and multiple viewings have only made me appreciate it more. I'm a newbie when it comes to Harmony Korine's previous work. I've never seen KIDS or GUMMO but I've heard enough about them to know I need to check them out at some point. For now, SPRING BREAKERS is my first exposure to his work and it's got my attention. It pits a dark crime story against the vibrant energized atmosphere of the crazy college world of Spring Break. At least, the Spring Break you've seen on MTV…drunk, sexually jack-up college students going totally insane.

This is a movie about evil people. Seriously, all but one person in this movie is a sociopath. The only objectively good person in the movie bails as soon as things start going sour. The most fun is watching the dark side of these girls slowly reveal themselves as the movie goes on. You start to wonder who's really the one being manipulated: these girls or Alien? You know they're not your average college hotties early on when you see how easily crime comes to them, but you don't realize how cold they can be. Despite the girls' rapid descent into the seedier side of Spring Break, the violence isn't over-the-top here. The nudity is…so, you know, this really isn't for the actual longtime fans of people like Hudgens and Gomez. This is their attempt at breaking free from their Disney Channel roots. Hudgens had some success with her turn in SUCKER PUNCH but this secures it. I'm pretty sure pot-smoking and threesomes are a surefire way to bust out of that mold. Gomez doesn't go as nuts here but she's still doing her best to be seen as an actual actress. The performances are pretty good for what they are. James Franco has been receiving a lot of praise for his role as Alien. Honestly, he annoyed me the first time I watched the movie. Horribly. But it wasn't his performance, it's just that people like the grate on my nerves. Franco does a great job here, and it's one of his most strange performances.

SPRING BREAKERS isn't for everyone and I'd hope most people would know what they're settling in for if they decide to watch it. It's a gritty, surreal film with some nice eye candy and a foreboding atmosphere playing against the Spring Break wonderland we all envision when we think of college co-eds going nuts. It's a refreshing change from the usual mainstream release, even if it can be a little frustrating to watch at times.

Spring Breakers is one of those films, you keep wanting to switch off, but have to get to end, it's not exactly a good film, but the story is such that you have to know what comes next.

It's so outrageously over the top, that it pretty much belongs in the fantasy genre, however there are a few concepts which are sadly all too realistic.

James Franco is good, but is like a parrot with gold teeth, he repeats many lines over and over. Selina Gomez does a fair job.

Nonsense, but watchable, the ending is at least bold. 6/10

I watched this film on Amazon Prime where its genres are listed as "comedy, drama", which does such a huge disservice to what this film is.

It is in no way a comedy at all so get that idea out of your head before you watch this film. In reality it is a dark crime drama which has an incredible tone and vibe to it.

At times tone and vibe are favoured over plot and storytelling, but having digested this film a bit I don't think I mind. There were some wildly good visuals in this film and the direction from Harmony Korine was top notch.

I loved the performances from all of the cast. Franco's character was very out there but it worked in the context of the film.

A wildly underrated film which was probably hampered by the fact that people were expecting a frat bro comedy, when in actuality this is a much more elevated and stylish affair.

Harmony Korine is a strange one. I've seen 3 of his other films, Gummo, Mister Lonely and Julien Donkey Boy and I thought they were decent to good. I can often see what he's trying to do but its lack of character and substance hurts it. Spring Breakers is perhaps his most mainstream effort given the concept, stars and the slick production but it's probably his least interesting. With MTV style cinematography and editing, a dubstep soundtrack and drama distant from the camera, the result is an unpleasant nightmare. I'm not sure who this film is aiming at, the type of person the film is about or the art-house crowd where the the techs are the furthest to their taste? It wants to be a comment on contemporary party culture but its unrealistic characters make it unbearably tedious. Every time a character starts to becomes sympathetic, they leave the film, and far too easily at that. Why are we even trapped in this nightmare if the characters are deliberately raising the stakes? It's a film that relishes on forced juxtapositions such as singing Britney Spears over robberies and it ends up obvious or pointless, nulling its effect. I still don't really know what to make to Spring Breakers but it definitely isn't my thing.

5/10

This is a strange film. On the one hand, it looks likes an extended music video, filled with mindless scenes of teenagers having one big party. On the other hand, there's clearly more to it. Some characters are so one-dimensional and cartoon-like, that the whole film becomes a sort of mockery of the modern teenage culture. This ambiguity is very clever, because the film appeals to a teenage audience as well as to the art-house audience Harmony Korine is usually associated with.

But at the same time, this ambiguity stands in the way of 'Spring Breakers' being a really good film. Unlike other serious movies about teenage culture, like 'Thirteen', 'Ghost World', Korine's own 'Kids' or the recent 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower', this film looks too easy. The temptation of showing lots of girls in bikini has been stronger than the ambition of trying to tell something meaningful.

Still, there are some nice moments. The hold-up in the restaurant is beautifully filmed from the window of a car slowly passing by. It's nice that, later on in the film, the director shows some short moments of what happened inside the restaurant. I would have liked more ambitious film making like that, and less footage of wild parties.