Review: Spring Breakers

Four bored stoner college girls (Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, and Rachel Korine) don’t have the funds to head off to Florida for Spring Break. Unfortunately, they don’t do the sensible thing and suck it up and stay home. Instead, they commit robbery and head off to Florida where they encounter a dopey but sleazy and volatile drug dealer and wannabe gangsta rapper named Alien (James Franco, clearly having zero interest in making safe career choices). He’s kind of a minor (very minor) celebrity amongst the Spring Break crowd, and when the girls end up jailed on some minor hijinks, Alien bails them out. Soon he’s insidiously inserting himself in their lives, manipulating them. Christian girl Gomez is the only one who can see things have gotten out of hand. The others don’t seem to care, but is Alien the most dangerous person here?

 

Writer-director Harmony Korine (“Gummo”) gives us an empty film about empty people with this 2013 blend of “Natural Born Killers” and “Girls Gone Wild”. Korine’s inability or disinterest in getting inside these girls’ heads and fleshing out their characters is infuriating and fatal to the film. Aside from party-pooper Selena Gomez the girls are all of a hivemind (though Ashley Benson at least has some charisma), and frankly that just won’t do. Even if it’s intentional that these characters are undeveloped and indistinguishable beyond their hair colour, it doesn’t make for satisfying viewing. If there’s not much plot and I can’t tell the characters apart, why should I care? Who are these girls? Why have they chosen this particular course of action for their quick fund-raising? I don’t even think Korine is necessarily endorsing these vapid criminals, there appears to be little to no statement being made about them – or anything else – in the film. It’s just montage after montage, with the occasional monologue delivered by idiot Franco. It’s entirely vacuous, and a vacuous film about vacuous people isn’t as clever as it might sound.

 

Performance-wise, the only one of the girls who doesn’t come across like a poseur is again, Ms. Benson. She’s credible, just not interesting. In the best performance in the film James Franco is funny and uncomfortably sleazy (his car has dollar sign hubcaps – priceless!), but there’s not 85 minutes worth of story in his character, either. Still, he’s the only thing of interest in what is mostly a giant rap video montage of scantily clad youngsters gyrating. There’s some potential interest in that I’ll openly admit, but far less than 85 minutes worth of interest that’s for damn sure. Besides, most of this film’s adult content comes from twelve-letter words, you don’t see much below the waist here I’m afraid, so it doesn’t even work on the level of sleaze. Korine’s self-indulgent, wanky indie filmmaking ‘style’ is also counter-productive to audience enjoyment. The best I can say for the film is that it’s slightly easier to endure than “Natural Born Killers”.

 

Thin, aimless, and utterly disposable crime-drama with hollow characters, aimless storytelling, and only one performance worth a damn. It’s a bunch of snapshots set to lame hippity-hop music, but hey, it was apparently Quentin Tarantino’s favourite film of 2013 so at least someone liked it. And what in the hell is veteran pro wrestler Jeff Jarrett doing in this as a bible-bashing counsellor? That was random.

 

Rating: D+