Spring Breakers
Review by Sean Lynch
Every so often a film infuriates you so much, it must be good. Spring Breakers is, without doubt, an infuriating film.
It lacks morals, it glorifies the ever growing idiocy of America with barely a wink of irony and, at times, it's unsure if it's a biting artistic satire or a long winded MTV music video. Yet, it's these anger inducing, patience pushing, conflicting reasons Spring Breakers is one of the most interesting flicks of 2013.
The set up is fairly basic, four college girls (three "crazy ragamuffins" and one "goody goody two shoes") head off to Spring Break (American Schoolies Week) using money stolen from an impromptu armed robbery. Their bad streak and hard partying ways soon land them all in jail.
However, jail is the least of their worries when they find themselves bailed out by a local drug dealer (James Franco) who takes them under his wing.
While director Harmony Korine's plan here seems to be to criticise the "vapid youth of today", the sad fact is that it never quite delivers the biting landing punch that's promised - and needed - to hammer home to viewers what's happening on the screen isn't the way to live your life. If anything, it simply gives impressionable minds some new hedonistic poster children to look up to.
That said, there is a lot to like here. James Franco continues to mesmerise on screen (purely because he consistently looks like he has no idea what he's doing, therefore making him unpredictable and thus infinitely interesting) as the over the top cult master - a character destined to be a popular Halloween costume this year.
Meanwhile, the teaming of the Disney twins (Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens) also pushes the boundries of good taste in a despaerate attempt to break them out of their squeaky clean images (something Emma Watson has managed with far more class and credibility).
However, it's Rachel Korine who is the real star of Spring Breakers, with a genuine "slutty" look and style that grounds the film in a very depressing and scary place. Her character is easily the most believable, and quite possibly the saving grace, in cementing the negatives in Harmony Korine's glorified world of drugs and sex.
Spring Breakers is not for everyone, even for the audience it's aimed at. It's challenging, frustrating and deeply cathartic on a very dark level. It's very rare to come across a movie these days that's so frustrating you're still mulling over how you feel about it days - or even weeks later - so for that very reason it's worth checking out.
Oh yeah - did I mention there's some great V-Hudge T & A included in there too? Yeah, heaps of it bro, bonus points!
3 out of 5
Spring Breakers
Australian release: 9th May, 2013
Cast: Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane
Director: Harmony Korine
