Spring Breakers – review

Spring Breakers stars Heather Morris, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, James Franco and Vanessa Hudgens. Photograph: Allstar/Muse Productions/Sportsphoto Ltd

From the trailer, Harmony Korine’s new film appears like a trashy, but slick “good-girls-gone-bad” affair; youths’ raucous partying and drug-taking getting out of hand and spilling over into the world of gangsters and guns.

Four disillusioned college girls head to Florida Beach on spring vacation to lose themselves in the moment and party in the sun, sea and sexually-infused environment.

One of those gangsters they encounter is eccentric, gold-toothed rapper/drug dealer/thief, Alien [James Franco], who has plans for the four girls after he bails them out of jail.

Interestingly Korine casts former sugar-coated Disney stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens in main roles, which adds to the shock factor of this film, where the girls’ blasé attitude, foul-mouths and titillation are clearly meant to arouse and unsettle in equal measure.

The young director burst onto the movie scene when he penned the script for the notorious Kids (1995) and now, just turned 40, he has created another tale of youths eagerly immersing themselves in the hedonistic trip of sex and substance-abuse.

With Spring Breakers he throws guns and music into the mix. The music is particularly embedded in this film, with a pulsating soundtrack that drives the heady, highly-charged and colourful, dreamlike state the characters and viewers are hypnotised by.

The problems with Spring Breakers start with the tone, which seems morally confused. The shameless party-goers dismiss caution in their thrill-seeking and end up going off the rails, but whilst things go wrong there are too many laughs (mainly provided by Alien) to allow us to properly feel for some of the characters who want to get off the ride. It all gets too much for Faith [Gomez], who soon realises that this is not the trip she “signed up for.”

There are plenty of moments of repetition and slow-motion, both in imagery and dialogue, as intoxicating music from the likes of Skrillex washes over us, which adds to the trippy vibe and Spring Breakers truly is a sun-soaked (and alcohol-soaked) and vibrant, Ibiza-like experience.

Director Korine is not shy about constantly panning across tanned, lubricated and scantily-clad female bodies partying on the beach and virtually all the girls on show seemingly have lesbian tendencies.

At times it feels like a film-length, uncut music video and you can actually imagine stars like David Guetta and Neyo collaborating to create a similar concept video. It is also like an American version of the TV series Skins.

The difference with Skins is that it often shows a moral message and has a heart, whereas this film does not leave much to contemplate afterwards, especially after the ludicrous climax.

The opening half hour is the build-up to spring break where the girls – Candy [Vanessa Hudgens], Brit [Ashley Benson], Cotty [Rachel Korine] and Faith – plan the trip and all but Faith end up robbing a chicken shop to get enough money to go.

It would have been more interesting to see all naive girls heading to the hedonism and getting sucking into criminality, via alcohol-influenced networking and experimenting. Korine though seems hell-bent on making this as glossy, sexy and debauched as possible and the flow of the film is unrelenting, despite things spiralling out of control.

Maybe he was trying to capture the tone of a Bret Eastern Ellis story, but if so, this is a very poor-man’s Rules of Attraction. If he wanted a modern-day Trainspotting, it is missing the evocative magic and likeable characters of a Danny Boyle picture.

One likeable character in Spring Breakers is Alien. James Franco’s performance is the movie’s saving grace, as he clearly revels in the role of the money, girls and guns-obsessed “playa”, who is hilarious in his bravado, faux-philosophising and rhyming.

There are a couple of dynamite scenes involving Alien, one where he waxes-lyrical about all his “shit” (his assets) and another when he plays Britney Spears’ Everytime on his white piano with his “beautiful bitches.” These are rare memorable moments in a muddled movie.

Strangely enough, in retrospect, if you were to view the film as a daydream of a cautious, but bored college girl wondering what would happen if she was to be tempted into going on a spring-break trip with her more adventurous and naughty friends, this might be a more satisfying experience.

Before the main feature there was a trailer for The Hangover III. These guys get up to all sorts of trouble in their alcohol and drug-fuelled trips, but it is a knowing comedy saga about the scary things that can happen when you use, booze and abuse. Bring on the “wolf pack” rather than these wild-child girls.

Spring Breakers (18)
Directed by Harmony Korine
Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane.
Running time: 94 minutes

Spring Breakers is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse throughout April.