By Brian Laughran
As I was leaving the theater after watching “Spring Breakers”, something incredible happened. My girlfriend and I entered the lobby and standing right before the snack bar was a large black rectangular shape. Suddenly, ominous, operatic music began to flood my ears as I was drawn to the shape. I touched it and I was transported billions of light years away and billions of years into the future and thus I was reborn, the world was reborn, bad movies themselves were reborn. I now know that I have thus witnessed the next stage in evolution of bad movies.
Indy filmmaker Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” is a horrendous mess of a film that either takes itself so seriously that it’s funny or is trying so hard to be serious that it’s funny. The plot revolves around four girls who rob a restaurant in order to venture off on Spring Break. Once they have their cash and reach the Sodom of beaches, they become involved in a culture of drugs, alcohol, loose sex and find themselves in the crosshairs of a rapper named Alien (James Franco).
I’d mention the girls who play the four principal leads, but (other than Selena Gomez) none of them have personalities or character traits to distinguish them from one another. They’re generic, boring, bleach-blonde bimbos. Gomez, who plays the principal protagonist of the film, has no purpose other than being “the good one”. By the way, if you’re looking forward to seeing Gomez in this film, as you might be a fan, save your money. She walks out half way through the movie. That’s right folks, the principal protagonist is written out of the film half way through.
Once Gomez is gone, the film essentially becomes the James Franco show. In my last review, I claimed that Franco just might be the most likeable actor in Hollywood. He also happens to be one of the strangest. He parades around this film like the illegitimate love-child of Captain Jack Sparrow and Vanilla Ice. His performance is hilarious, but unlike the rest of the film I’m not sure that’s unintentional. I have a theory Franco is pulling an Andy Kauffman with this movie. For those of you who don’t know who that is, Kauffman was a comedian who would often open for himself on the road dressed as an alter ego. This alter ego would bomb, intentionally. My feeling is this: Franco did this movie as a weird, art house experiment just to see what would happen. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit. Either way, it’s a weird performance that, in a way, demands to be watched.
(Franco’s not much of a rapper/singer. He’s given a moment to rap on stage; thank God it only lasts a few moments. Then he’s given a Brittany Spears music number, which is as unintentionally funny as it sounds.)
Overall, this film is a tonal mess. There are times where it seems like Korine wants to give his audience a fun, party flick. Others, it seems like he wants to make abstract art. And still others, it seems he wants to make a crime film. The problems arise when he tries to put these things together. The juxtaposition of these elements, I assume, was to jar the audience. It does so, but in the wrong way. The script, direction and editing all come off as lazy and sophomoric.
The screen is flooded with nudity, drugs, alcohol and numerous party scenes. If you watch carefully you’ll notice that they’re the same shots just played over and over again – simply re-edited, slowed down, sped up, whatever.
The script feebly tries to give its characters things to feel and deep emotional epiphanies. These “revelations” come so late in the film that I found myself thinking: “Stop trying to be a movie. It’s too late for that.”
I hate it when people in the theater talk during a movie. But, during this film, I couldn’t help myself. I was yelling this at the screen, making obscene gestures at the screen and generally laughing louder at inappropriate moments than Max Cady in “Cape Fear”. This practice is generally quite rude…but, in this case, half the theater was doing it with me.
RATING: F