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| It had so much potential to be such trashy fun. |
On the surface, Spring Breakers seems like a fun, raunchy teen comedy about slutty college girls letting go of their inhibitions and kicking back in Miami for a week. And I believe this is what they wanted us to think. They wanted you to think you were seeing a guilty pleasure flick about former Disney Channel stars drinking or taking a hit from a bong for the first time. BUT THAT IS NOT AT ALL WHAT THIS FILM IS ABOUT. Now I won't tell you not to see it, but I will let you know exactly what you're in store for. (Don't worry, I'll try not to spoil anything.)
Spring Breakers stars Disney darlings Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, Pretty Little Liar Ashley Benson, and some bitch who I've never heard of, but she's apparently married to the director, as four college girls. (Their names are all really weird and said so few times in the film that one couldn't possible learn them.) I'm not sure where the fuck these girls are from, but apparently it's so goddamn unbearable and they're just so bored because all they do is see the same things and people every day. Um, yeah. That's called life, dip shits. Also, where is this college? It doesn't look southern, but y'all sure say "y'all" a lot.
Anyway, the girls decide to go on a last-minute spring break vacay to Miami, where they get entangled with a drug dealer named Alien (James Franco) and hijinks ensue. So far, it sounds like a hilarious teen comedy, right? You couldn't be more wrong, because that is literally the plot. Nothing else happens. Allow me to explain.
On top of being filmed from weird angles, Spring Breakers has the most screwy narrative structure I've ever seen. Scenes are spliced and intercut with one another all over the goddamn place. Several are revisited several times. In general, they're shown in sequence, but the film often jumps backward or leaps forward, barely bothering to fill in what happens in the middle. If it were to be re-edited linearly, the 93-minute flick would probably only last half that running time. Spring Breakers tries too hard to be innovative and artistic, that it loses any semblance of an actual film in the process. It's as if an overeager film student was given the resources to create his idea of a masterpiece.
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| Three shitty dye jobs should be reason enough not to see this. |
Consequently, there's hardly any dialog. You like Selena Gomez? That's too fucking bad. Not only does she barely speak, but she only appears in the first half of the film. And as much as Selena likes to brag about this film as a sign of her maturation, she plays the least interesting and cleanest-cut girl of the bunch. Her role doesn't exactly require any talent, and she totally blows the only dramatic scene she had to prove herself. Her performance is a painfully transparent attempt at shedding her Disney image, and it totally backfires.
As for the other girls, well, they're fucking tacky and insane. There's nothing redeemable or likable about any of these characters. The only mildly interesting character is James Franco's Alien, but even he comes off as a creepy uncle fresh out of jail for fondling an underage girl. Everything is so unsettling, even disturbing at some points. These characters are criminals, completely devoid of any humanity.
In short, the film only succeeds at making the audience uncomfortable by try too hard and exploiting its stars. It does, however, gets bonus points for its boundless colors and its mad appreciation for Britney Spears (as disturbing as it is to hear her beautiful ballad "Everytime" score a montage of unsavory activity). And if you've ever wanted to see your favorite teen starlets engage in beer-guzzling, pot-smoking, girl-kissing, gun-wielding fun, then maybe this film is for you. But just be warned you're in for some avant garde bullshit.
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