What happens when you take two scantily clad ex-Disney darlings, add a Pretty Little Liar, the wife of a crazy director, James Franco as a rapping drug lord and obscene amounts of alcohol? If you guessed that this was a recipe for disaster, then you were correct.
In Harmony Korine’s new film, Spring Breakers, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Rachel Korine and Ashley Benson play four college girls that want nothing more than to get away for spring break. In order to fund their trip, Brit (Benson), Candy (Hudgens) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) do what every broke college student does — hold up a restaurant. They then use their newfound fortune to go on perhaps the craziest spring break trip that has ever happened.
Everything seems to be going great; the girls are getting drunk, singing off-key renditions of Britney Spears and riding around on scooters. But eventually, their luck runs out when they get arrested at a wild hotel party. Thankfully, Alien (Franco), the creepy, dreadlocked, gun-wielding drug dealer, comes to their rescue and bails them out. Faith (Gomez) seems to be the only one that’s freaked out by this random act of kindness. The other three are content to engage in his exciting, fast-paced life and take part in all kinds of illegal and disgusting behavior just for the rush and to get a change of pace from their boring college life.
At first, I didn’t know how I was supposed to take Franco seriously when he came out singing a ridiculous rap in his gold teeth and magic marker tattoos. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take any part of the movie seriously actually or if this was just an exaggerated parody of the infamous college spring break. As the movie went on, however, I became disgusted with how believable Franco was as his character. I’ve never wished an actor would do a worse job portraying his character until I saw this movie.
Although I think all the actors played their parts pretty well, the movie itself wasn’t realistic. Writer and director Harmony Korine was definitely on point with the shock factor, but he’s 0-for-1 in terms of believability. As a college student, I was offended by how shallow and stupid these girls appeared to be. I don’t know if what they were saying was supposed to be deep or was actually supposed to be perceived as unintelligent and melodramatic as it sounded. With the amount of threesomes, random crotch shots and lesbian-inspired scenes that occurred, it seemed more like the director’s fantasy rather than a portrayal of actual reality. Is this what people think college girls actually do? Roll around in their underwear doing drugs and petting each other?
It wasn’t so much the nudity or the guns or the drugs that made Spring Breakers so offensive— it’s how they all came together to make it unnecessarily vulgar. It was definitely disturbing as well. At one point, Alien pointed out what we had all been thinking: Faith looks like she is 15. Watching her take a hit from a bong or seeing large men leer at her doesn’t make you feel young, wild and free, just a little nauseous. Technically, the actors are all of age, but I still wanted to yell at any grown man in the audience that seemed to be enjoying any part of the girls’ frisky adventures.
I think the most accurate way to describe Spring Breakers is as my friend did. “It’s a horror movie,” she claimed, because we were literally horrified for the majority of the time.
Maybe I just didn’t understand the vision of Korine. When the movie ended, I just asked myself, “What was the point of that?” That being said, seeing Spring Breakers was definitely an experience. Despite my many visceral reactions, I didn’t hate it. The prudish should avoid this film at all costs. I won’t tell the rest of you not to see it, but I’ll warn you that you’ll never want to go on spring break again.
