Spring Breakers





Directed By: Harmony Korine

Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and Gucci Mane

I came into Spring Breakers with some pretty low expectations.  The trailer simply didn't make the sale for me.  A gangster party movie with some all grown up, scantily clad teen princesses and a thugged up James Franco didn't leave me expecting much.  There are so many ways that a movie like this could go wrong.  In my mind, there was no way this thing could end well.  Honestly, I was quite wrong about Spring Breakers.  Director Harmony Korine treats us to a delight we didn't even know we wanted.  Whenever I get this flick on Blu-Ray, I promise you that it will be on repeat.

College girls Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine), and Faith (Selena Gomez) have been friends since childhood and are looking to have some fun during spring break this year.  They'd love to go to Florida, but the $325 they've saved over the course of the school year is nowhere near enough cheddar to get them there.  Desperate not to be the pathetic students who stayed put during the break, Brit and Candy decide to rob a fast food place.  With Cotty handling the getaway driving, the girls are able to pull together enough money to go to Florida for the time of their lives.  While she doesn't agree with her friends' methods, Faith isn't missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime either.

The girls get to Florida and get a room at a motel.  They quickly hit the beach and the party scene.  The beer is flowing, and the cocaine is snowing.  Everybody is partying like a rockstar.  The girls are having the best time of their lives, and they want spring break to last forever.  When the girls are tearing down a hotel room with other fellow spring breakers and the cops arrive, they quickly learn that nothing lasts forever.  They're taken to jail on charges of possessing cocaine.  They have a knight in shining armor though, a rapper by the name of Alien (James Franco) who performed at one of the beach parties. When this hustler bails them out, the girls start having a whole new kind of fun.  Spring break turns into a dangerous new life.

Spring Breakers is a movie I don't quite know how to classify.  There's enough partying to make me think I'm watching a Girls Gone Wild video.  There are plenty of gangsters and wannabe thugs trying to hustle in this estrogen-fueled ode to Scarface.  There's even plenty of surprisingly intriguing drama amongst our four little chickies.  Regardless of whatever this film is classified as, I know one thing.  Spring Breakers is a damn good movie.  Harmony Korine gets it right from start to finish in this raucous depiction of spring break in all its decadent glory.

Despite its title, Spring Breakers is not a movie that glorifies the awesome nature of spring break.  While Korine repeatedly highlights those moments where revelers are getting wild and having a phenomenal time on the beach, he doesn't shy away from the sad reality of it all.  In fact, he embraces the more sobering reality with quite a bit of humor.  When Brit and Candy say that they're having the most beautiful time of their lives for example, urinating on the side of a Florida road and snorting cocaine make Korine's real message abundantly clear.  These girls' dream is stealing other people's money and partying forever.  In this sense, it's a tragic distortion of the American dream that Korine explores.  Those frequently shown images of revelers partying vigorously take on a different meaning by the end of the movie.  They become a pathetic vision of a fleeting utopia that only happens during a tiny period of our lives.

Last year in Killer Joe, I thought I had seen everything when a bloody Gina Gershon gave that KFC drumstick a blow job.  Well, James Franco gives her a run for her money this year when he does the same deed with a couple of pistols.  As Alien, I have to say that Franco is a G despite the fact that he tries to belt out a Britney Spears tune in the movie.  I never thought I would write those words, but he literally transforms into this wild hustler with dreadlocks who professes that life is all about "big booty, money, and poetry".  I didn't think he could convincingly portray a character like this, but Franco is really proving himself to be a chameleon.  After all, this is the same guy who portrayed a con man with a heart in Oz: The Great and Powerful just two weeks ago.  Oz is apparently versatile.

The girls starring in this movie prove themselves to be equally versatile.  With Disney star Selena Gomez, High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens, ABC Family's Ashley Benson, and the relatively unknown Rachel Korine, it's safe to say that I had my doubts.  I didn't think they could convincingly portray mature characters like these armed and dangerous seductresses.  These roles demand raw, visceral performances charged with sexual energy.  They require young women, not girls.  I didn't think these teen princesses who typically appear in sugary productions could do it.  They certainly have proven me wrong.  Girls, there's a place here for you on the big screen whenever you're ready to leave the kids' table.  When you do come back, bring the hilarious Gucci Mane back with you.  He's one funny dude.

Spring Breakers is the first oversexed movie with a purpose in quite some time.  I genuinely loved this movie.  I can't get it out of my head.  It's the first infectious film of the year, and we'll be talking about this one for a long time to come.  Spring Breakers gets a 0.03% rating.  Have some wine coolers with this one.