Spring Breakers premiered almost six months ago, and yet its allure is as strong as the day the teaser trailer first appeared on YouTube. Something about this film has launched it to cultural-phenomenon-status, be it the ex-Disney stars, the plethora of bikinis, or the irresistibly bright aesthetic. Spring break is an eternal concept beloved by many, and this film both glorifies and condemns it. Whether the film deserves the hype it has received is still being debated . . .
Spring Breakers is like the extended cut of a raunchy low-budget music video that was compiled using a broken editing program. That may sound harsh, but if you’ve seen the movie you know I’m being easy on it. When I have to pay $11 to see a film, I expect it to meet a few basic standards: a plot that holds my attention, well-written dialogue, and halfway decent character development. Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, I’m sorry to say, struck out in all of these categories . . . by a long shot.
The movie doesn’t have a plot so much as a premise—four girls are sick of college and want to go to Florida for spring break. Fair enough. They don’t have the money to go, however, so how do they get it? By robbing a fast food restaurant at gun-point, obviously! Facing absolutely no consequences for grand-theft-auto, assault, burglary, and arson, the four girls (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and Selena Gomez) head off to Florida after screaming a lot and rubbing $100 bills all over themselves in the dorm bathroom. Hudgens’ and Benson’s characters, Candy and Brit, are essentially interchangeable. Rachel Korine (the director’s wife) plays Cotty, whose only distinctive feature is her pink hair. Gomez is easily the most recognizable of the foursome as Faith, the subtly-named religious girl with an inexplicable Southern accent. The girls meet a gangster/drug dealer/all-around weirdo named Alien (played by James Franco), and from then on no semblance of a plot remains. The latter half of the movie consists of montage after montage of sex, drinking, drugs, sex, crime, and more sex.
Faith eventually leaves Florida because Al creeps her out, and the audience sympathizes because they wish they could leave the theater too. Her storyline is never wrapped up. In fact, she never appears on screen again and is never mentioned at all by any of the characters, which isn’t surprising considering the fact that not once in the entire 90 minutes do two characters have a conversation. When the girls talk to each other, one of them repeats the same sentence over and over while the other ones touches her hair. There are voiceovers galore, but they are all taken from the same 5 minute audio track. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every single line in this movie was repeated at least four times. The most iconic line, spoken probably twelve times by each character, is “spring break . . . spring break forever.” You don’t know the definition of creepy until you’ve heard James Franco whispering that line like a war cry and staring deep into your soul while you wonder how many earrings could be made out of his shiny, 2 pound grille.
To say that this movie makes its audience uncomfortable would be a massive understatement. I was horrified for at least 90% of the time, but luckily, the other 10% of the time I was laughing hysterically because
Spring Breakers isn’t
all bad. In fact, it contains one of the single funniest montages I’ve ever seen. The sad part is, I don’t think Harmony Korine or the 20 production companies
wanted the movie to be funny. But honestly, you have never truly laughed at a movie until you’ve seen James Franco sitting at a white piano on a pool deck singing “Everytime” by Britney Spears while girls wearing essentially nothing except pink ski masks dance around, shooting up a bunch of gangsters while obese naked black women look on in horror. Luckily, that unintentionally hilarious scene saved the movie from being a complete disaster.
Some would argue that Korine is attempting a social critique, or some kind of ironic jab at youth culture, but the film is so poorly constructed (the sound of a gun being reloaded accompanies
every single scene change) that it really is nothing more than a thinly disguised porno. I can’t think of anything good to say about
Spring Breakers besides the fact that it is still a better love story than
Twilight.
Originally posted in DART Magazine
