Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers isn’t your run of the mill spring break flick. First off it stars a bunch of former Disney chicks as “girls gone bad” type characters. Secondly, it has James Franco as a grill wearing, drug dealing, corn-row stylin’ G. Lastly, it has a score by Skrillex which should give you an idea as to the crazy tone and dynamic this film has the potential to have.
In Spring Breakers, Faith (Selena Gomez), Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) are friends looking to find a way to go on spring break. After coming up short in the financial department, three of the girls decide to rob a store to fund their trip. While going crazy during their vacation, the foursome gets arrested alongside some drug dealers and end up being bailed out by the gangster and wannabe rapper, Alien (Franco). Eventually, the girls decide to stick around and extend their break by crashing at Alien’s crib and joining him on his violent and thieving escapades.
Spring Breakers is a film of about sex, drugs and violence, but mostly sex and violence and the desire to live the dream. Though it happens more before James Franco’s appearance than after, the film plays out like an R-rated music video shot during spring break at a place like Panama City Beach. Things certainly get wild and there is a ton of sex, drugs, sexual references, unexpected sexual encounters and partying.
There are a couple of weird things that will definitely divide audiences as you watch the feature. Throughout the film, there are a ton of slow motion sequences paired with the use of voiceover by the various characters. The issue with that is Harmony decided to have lines repeated two or three times during the scenes and it must have happened during six or seven scenes. It was very weird and it seemed as if he just didn’t have enough material to fill up a 90 minute feature. On the other hand, this surreal aspect of the film made it seem like a dream, the exact dream most of these girls wanted to live and end up doing so which would then make this unorthodox style appropriate. As you can see, it’s definitely really odd and may work for some but will just annoy others and start causing them to get impatient.
My biggest critique of the film is its cool and unpredictable ending (yes, I know that sounds weird but hear me out). The buildup and look of this climactic ending is fantastic but Harmony decided to show it all in slow motion (five minutes worth). The reason this doesn’t work well at all is that it takes all of the excitement out of the ending, ruining all the fun chaos that we could have enjoyed and hearing the action in all its glory rather than see
ing everything coming a mile away and ruining our thrill of the moment.
Other than the above, the iffy performances by a few of the leads, and some odd dialogue that they delivered, the film has a lot of really cool qualities to it, namely the look, the transitions, the girls’ robbery outfits (bikini’s with hot pink ski masks with a unicorn logo on it), the score, anything related to James Franco’s character, and the plethora of naked woman.
The film doesn’t really get going until James Franco shows up and, when he does, everything gets 1000 times better. Franco excels in these types of roles (think Pineapple Express) and while the guy has been pretty flat in his last few films, he does a complete 180 for Spring Breakers and has found, what will probably be, the most memorable character of his career. He was hilariously engrossed in Alien and didn’t hold back at all plus, to make it even better, his dialogue was insanely funny making him easily one of the most quotable characters of the year. After you see the film you’ll be slowly whispering to yourself “spring break, spring break, spring break forever” or yelling “look at my shit!” or “you girls are like old fashion bitches straight out of the book.” Those lines are just the tip of the iceberg as the dialogue is only part of the joy Franco imparts on us.
Overall, Spring Breakers transitions from a bland film about girls wanting to escape their lives to a really awesome party full of crazy and unexpected shenanigans. It has the look of an authentic spring break experience and captures the true essence of some of the gangsters that thrive on the party environment and living their life the way they want to. The movie preaches “if you want something, take it” and when they bring that mantra to life everyone in the audience benefits from it.
Rating: Go for the wild time of boobs and booze but watch it for James Franco and his epic gangsta performance (6.6/10)
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