Spring Breakers - "Just pretend it's a video game. Like you're in a fucking movie."
Spring Breakers is tough to decipher, on the one hand you have a typical Spring Break film focused on four very different girls who are friends with loads of drugs, booze, tits & ass, & on the other hand you have a spiritual journey set in the confines of a sometimes thrilling roller coaster of a narrative. The film is essentially about four girls who are childhood friends that don't have enough money to go to Spring Break in Florida so they rob a diner with fake guns and balaclavas. This is initially very confusing because there was no hint whatsoever that these girls were the violent kind. So they get down to Florida and there is loads of cringe worthy voice over from all four girls about "finding ourselves" & "what it means to be a young girl in this day and age". So be prepared for some very realistic boring girl talk that means nothing, it's time filler and cannon fodder. The four girls are played by Selena Gomez (Faith), Vanessa Hudgens(Candy), Ashley Benson(Brit) & Rachel Korine(Cotty). Only two out of four have any depth and are actually tolerable, that being Brit & Candy, the wild cards of the bunch, the violent two, sex crazed, drug riddled & crazy. After some predictable Spring Break shenanigans they are thrown in jail for illegal possession of narcotics and are promptly bailed out by the man DJing at the party they were at the night previous. At this point we are introduced to James Franco in honestly his best role ever as "Alien". A Florida native drug dealing gangster with horrible grills in his teeth and shocking dreadlocks. He is the most charismatic and hilarious character in the film, in all honesty it's worth paying the price of admission just to see his performance.
Our not so awesome foursome become a fivesome and this is where the story really picks up. The film is shot in such a way that it's utterly hypnotic, the camera sways like a drunk person is holding it and the composition of each shot is superb, the cinematography is gorgeous it really lends itself to the Florida setting. Also surprisingly there are a number of musical sequences in the film in particular the Britney Spears montage scene is one of the funniest most clever montages I've ever seen on film, I want to believe it's poking fun at montages and that was the directors intentions but who knows when it comes to Harmony Korine's films, trying to decipher his intentions are impossible. As the antics of our scantily clad females become more & more extreme some of the girls grow weary of how far things are being taken, Alien is a non-stop gun toting ATM machine which the girls are addicted to (surprise surprise) and he enables them to feel invincible and drives them to act out their animal instincts. This film is labeled as an Art-House feature set within the confines of a sexed up teen film and it is exactly that, it's well directed however the script is very tedious. The constant repetition of girls voice over is excruciating as they say the same old shit over and over again. "I've found myself" "I feel so spiritual" "This is the best time of my life" and the problem with this is you believe every word because you've heard girls talk like this. It's definitely worth a watch, plenty of tits and ass, violence, drug use and hilarious over the top characters as well as some very realistic relatable characters, it's not perfect but it's unlike anything you've ever seen. 4/5
Bechdel test: There are 4 main female characters, they do talk to each other and most of the time it is not about men, they talk mainly of money, sing terrible pop songs and talk about finding themselves. The film passes the Bechdel test.
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