The movie has everything: beautiful actresses, a popular film actor, fun on the beach, and girls with rifles. Huh? SIDEWALKS’ Richard has his views on the much anticipated “Spring Breakers.”
“SPRING BREAKERS”
A24 Films
Directed by: Harmony Korine
Cast: Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine and James Franco
Rating:
Rated R for strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use and violence throughout.
Studio Synopsis:
From visionary director Harmony Korine comes a bold new vision of the seasonal American ritual known as spring break — the bacchanalia of bikinis, beach parties and beer bongs that draws hordes of college students to the Florida coast and elsewhere each year.
Brit (Ashley Benson), Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) are best friends anxious to cut loose on their own spring break adventure, but they lack sufficient funds. After holding up a restaurant for quick cash, the girls head to the shore in a stolen car for what they discover is the party of a lifetime. They’re thrown in jail — but quickly bailed out by Alien (James Franco), a local rapper, drug pusher and arms dealer who lures them into a criminal underbelly that’s as lurid as it is liberating for a close-knit gang of girlfriends who are still figuring out their path.
In the tradition of the landmark KIDS and GUMMO, Harmony Korine unleashes a ferocious, feverish and furiously alive youth-quake examining the sights, sounds and sensory overload of a new generation of restless youth. Featuring a stellar ensemble cast, hypnotic visuals by the cinematographer Benoît Debie (ENTER THE VOID, IRREVERSIBLE, THE RUNAWAYS) and a hallucinatory musical score by Cliff Martinez (DRIVE) and Skrillex, SPRING BREAKERS is an electrifying pop poem to girls gone wild from the enfant terrible of teenage kicks.
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouVDDB-Oo90′]
Richard’s Take:
Before I get into this review, here is a serious message for the parents whose kids love Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens from the Disney world. DON’T TAKE THEM TO THIS PICTURE! This film is definitely anti-Disney and your vision of these young ladies we grew up with will never be the same. [OK, friendly, family warning over]
After viewing “Spring Breakers” with a preview crowd, I admit I am having a hard time deciding whether I like this film or not. First of all, it wasn’t anything I was expecting to see (I try not to watch the trailer or read about the film, although I did see pictures of the young ladies during filming appearing on several websites). I knew it was about four girls going to spring break and I assume we would follow them on a misadventure, like you see on those young teen comedies where the kids go to Florida for beer and sex. But, “Spring Breakers” isn’t close to the light misadventure I thought it would be.
The Motion Picture Association of America gave “Spring Breakers” a R-rating for “strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use, and violence throughout.” With this film, the writer / director Harmony Korine (writer of “Kids” and director for “Gummo,” “Julien Donkey-Boy” and “Mister Lonely”) triples that in almost every scene. The film does follow four college girls — Hudgens, Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine – who are tired of their regular school life and want to go on spring break. While three of the girls are already wild with frequent drug use, Gomez plays a spiritual character who wants to break out and have fun. To finance their travel to Florida, three of the girls hold up a restaurant (in a cinematic and violent delivery — shooting the shot from the passenger side of a pickup truck while the action is in the background). When they finally reach spring break, they are arrested for drug use and are bailed out by a local gangster / aspiring rapper Alien (James Franco), who forces them in his world of local crime.
I describe this film as a cross between the psychedelica 1968 Monkees film, “Head” and the Woody Harrleson/Juliette Lewis 1994 feature “Natural Born Killers” with a touch of “Bonnie & Clyde” and a live-action version of popular violent video games. The film does come off as a jarring, visual display with re-lopped audio to emphasized dialogue, while taking every opportunity to show skin, guns and violence.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a drama with comedic overtones or designed to be a straight comedy or drama. Myself and a number of movie goers just found ourselves laughing outrageously. The one scene I couldn’t hold my laughter back is when Alien decided to sing a Britney Spears song with the girls in pink ski masks dancing with rifles. Bizarre and hilarious at the same time.
Franco does steal the spotlight from the girls. Playing Alien with dreadlocks, teeth grilled, and acting like a gangster, our previous “Sidewalks Entertainment” guest will be remembered for this as one of his weirdest portrayal in films. You got to him his props for taking on a role like this that shows he has a David Hasselhoff / William Shatner-type sense of humor. While I’m not familiar with “Pretty Little Liars‘” Benson or the director’s real-life wife Korine acting abilities, Hudgens does take on the riskiest departure with her career than her fellow Disney counterpart Gomez. The former “High School Musical” star is seen inhaling drugs and having a threesome in the pool.
What took me away from the story (or lack of) was the casting of the talents. Because they were familiar faces, I must admit that it distracted me from the storyline, especially when Hudgens and Gomez are on the screen. Maybe because they are popular young actresses in the headlines, I couldn’t get pass it and, being in this film, they were trying so hard to shed their Disney persona with a warp speed, grown up roles. I wonder how this movie would fare if the characters were done with unknowns or less popular actresses, but “Spring Breakers” wouldn’t get the fanfare and mainstream opportunity. On the other hand, Franco, after the initial humorist reaction that he was playing the character, got me to forget who he was after a period of time.
Throughout the entire screening, I kept shaking my head in disbelieve. It will be hit or miss whether people would like it, and young men would only love seeing the four girls in bikinis…and the nudity. I can envision that “Spring Breakers” will have a cult following. I didn’t appreciate it when I saw it, but I think at some point I will realize it was a wacky masterpiece.