Spring Breakers

Spring Breakers highlights the mindless popular culture that surrounds youth of this generation. The reason for its controversy stems from the fact that its target audience found its plot to be pointless, even though that was the point. This film depicts the shallowness of the modern definition of what is 'cool', like idolizing people that suck, those that contribute nothing to society but cheap entertainment. This sort of fascination blindly controls youth, the main reason so many did not understand the meaning behind this movie: they are blind to its influences. They think week long drinking binges, whoring themselves out, and having no goals is cool, because YOLO. However, this film is based off of these components and its audience deems the plot as pointless. Funny. Spring Breakers is like this generation looking itself directly in the mirror.

Overall, Spring Breakers is full of outstanding graphics, bright colors, provocative scenes, and young Disney turned Hollywood stars. It was fun yet hard to watch, depending how serious of a reality check you need (assuming you even understood that it was one)

Faith, played by Selema Gomez, and her three very close friends plan to escape their boring college dorm lives to attend a massive Spring Break party. In order to pay for their getaway, her three friends commit an unthinkable act of terror. Their Spring Break vacation turns out to be a non-stop party of drunken drug use and sexual perversion that lands them in prison. This is when Alien, played by James Franco, bails them out and a new type of party begins.

With a dub-step softcore porn music video opening sequence, it is uncertain if Spring Breakers is glorifying the demoralizing activities portrayed or if it is a satire. Even when the film is not flashing to what looks like stock footage of a Girls Gone Wild Spring Break special and we are with the girls, the framing seems to have been done by a sex addict. This will be one of the most uncomfortable experiences Selema Gomez's fans will ever experience. For parents, this will be an absolute nightmare. Younger male audiences, on the other hand, will think they've found their new favorite movie. When the girls are introduced to Alien the film feels like it gets a new director. The feeling of a Girls Gone Wild narrative feature film is lost and we are filled with a great sense of dread. Who is this guy who calls himself Alien? We even find ourselves afraid to find out what he has planned for these young girls he has bailed out of prison.

As we continue through the second half of the film, it becomes very clear that we are in fact watching a satire. A horrific and effective satire. This is done though exposing the character of Alien and much credit must be given to James Franco, this is him at his best. Through the course of the film we go from fearing him, to laughing at him, to feeling sorry for him. The film is worth watching just for Franco's performance. The girls do an excellent job as well. These are easily two of the most frightening female characters ever put on-screen.

Spring Breakers is written and directed by Harmony Korine, the writer of Kids and director of Gummo. If you've seen anything he has written or directed you already know what you are in for. It has the core of a Natural Born Killers story wrapped in layers of what would be if Terrence Malick directed Girls Gone Wild.

What ends up becoming an annoying distraction is the repetition of dialogue we hear over and over again, playing in a loop. It's understood we are in the girl's shoes, things are spiraling out of control and the editing helps get that across. Some of it works but in the end, we've heard the same things so many times it is as if Korine is hammering the message of his satire into our heads, almost desperate to prove it has a point. Through the story it's meaning is made clear, no reason to over-use certain Malick-like editing techniques to over-state what the story has already made obvious.

The core story is genius. The way in which the story is told is split between things that play out like a master at work and a new filmmaker still experimenting.

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.

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

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.