Spring Breakers

 

Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers is without a doubt one of the strangest movies I have ever seen.  It's a neon-lit teen exploitation film of boobs, booze, drugs, and partying filtered through the eyes of an art house film.  As on line critic, Stephen Carty, stated, "it's like Terrance Malick directing a Girls Gone Wild video".  That's actually the best description of this movie I could possibly think of.  I personally found the whole enterprise largely tedious and dull, outside of some standout performances.  I'm sure the fans of this movie will say that I either didn't see it, or just didn't get it.  To those people, I say I saw it, I got it, and I just didn't like it.

Harmony Korine has a knack for exploring the shallow and dangerous side of youth culture.  It stretches all the way back to his debut film, Kids, which he wrote the screenplay for when he was only 19.  This time, he's focusing on the party culture of college students who head down to Florida every Spring Break to revel in music and excess.  His targets are four bored girls who want to go to Florida and party, but don't have the funds to do so.  They include Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), and Cotty (Rachel Korine, Harmony's wife).  Of the girls, only Faith stands out, as she has been written with a bit of personality.  She's a religious girl, and begins to have a crisis of faith when things start to go bad.  The other three are largely interchangeable.

The film has created some controversy with its casting, due to the fact that three of its young stars are better known for having squeaky-clean teen images.  Here, we get to see them slide into booze, sex, murder, and debauchery.  Since the girls don't have enough money to hit Florida for Spring Break, they rob a local diner using realistic-looking plastic guns.  With the money in hand, the four girls head off to live their MTV-fueled fantasies for a week.  They're having a great time partying, drinking, and dancing to all-night music, until the police happen to raid their drug-filled motel room.  The girls are thrown in jail, but unexpectedly bailed out by a rapper gangster named Allen (James Franco), who roams about the city, seemingly looking for lost young souls to take under his wing.  He finds what he's looking for in the girls, and before long, three of them (Faith leaves early, due to that whole crisis of faith thing I mentioned earlier) are aiding Allen in his criminal lifestyle, wearing day-glo pink ski masks as they rob people at gun point.

Spring Breakers starts out kind of interesting as a critique of the youth culture who flock to beaches every year to get wasted, but it loses steam pretty quickly.  Then it gets even worse when the movie starts repeating itself.  Images, ideas, and even lines of dialogue ("Spring Break forever, bitches".) are repeated over and over, until we just don't want to see or hear them ever again.  I understand that this is all supposed to be "artful", but it really just came across to me as being monotonous.  I also understand that the characters are supposed to be shallow and vacuous.  But why is watching people who are shallow and vacuous supposed to be fun in the first place?  Why is it interesting?  It's not, and as Korine keeps on hitting the same notes over and over, you start to long for a fast forward button so you can speed past all the repetitive junk that fills this movie, and get to the point.

The only moments when the film comes alive is when James Franco is on the screen.  Not only is his performance the strongest in the film, but his character is the most interesting as he seduces these party girls into his lifestyle of guns and violence.  His performance is both charismatic and terrifying, and it makes a welcome change from the lead girls who, as I stated earlier, are largely interchangeable save for the one who leaves the picture early on.  There are some nice individual moments, and some good cinematography on display, but they don't add up to a whole lot.  The whole film, with its intentionally repetitive and shallow style, plays like an experiment, which could be interesting in the right hands.  Here, the whole thing falls apart quite quickly, and audiences are likely to get frustrated, just as I was.

 

There's not a whole lot of substance behind Spring Breakers.  Its message feels one-note and heavy handed as it pounds itself into your skull with repetition.  I'm sure this movie is going to divide most audiences.  Some will see it as some sort of art film masterpiece, while others will see it as insufferable and kind of pointless.  You can pick your side.  I'm picking the second category.

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