Runtime:1 hour, 30 minutes
Rating: R
Directors: Harmony Korine
Quick Impressions:
The only new movie out this week near me is the Evil Dead remake, but (as I explained in a previous review) I only do beautiful horror, not ugly horror. Trying to settle on something else, my husband and I kicked around quite a few titles but kept coming back to Olympus Has Fallen and Spring Breakers. Three things nudged me toward Spring Breakers:
1) I feel like I’ve already seen Olympus Has Fallen at least five times. It’s the White House, Morgan Freeman is there, it’s kind of like Die Hard, but it’s different because it’s in the White House, and Morgan Freeman is there. The premise just seems so familiar that it’s hard to get too excited about it.
2) As a rule, I don’t like James Franco, but I keep hearing that he’s the best part of Spring Breakers. I like to be fair and give those who haven’t impressed me in the past every possible chance to win me over. (This explains why I have a hard time passing up Tom Cruise movies.)
3) Perusing showtimes on fandango, I noticed that at a glance, user reviews of Spring Breakers look like a game of red light/green light. I only actually read the first line of two reviews. One called it “the first masterpiece of the year.” The other said, “This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life.” Who wouldn’t want to review that movie?
With all those factors in the mix, it was really a fourth consideration that sold me. Word of mouth said that Olympus Has Fallen has tons and tons of sensory overloading, graphically violent, explosive action. Spring Breakers, on the other hand, has tons and tons of sensory overloading, kind of trippy scenes of bouncing, naked breasts. If I’m going to check out because of inadequate plot and sensory overload and go into a trance while staring glassy-eyed at the screen, I’d rather be staring at bouncing breasts than severed limbs and explosions. The bouncing breasts just sound like less of an assault on the senses. And when I put it that way, my husband agreed that Spring Breakers was probably the better choice. So we went.
The Good:
I enjoyed every minute of this movie. As far as I’m concerned, it’s fun to watch. And it’s like a little puzzle, sort of like an arresting but enigmatic lyric poem. What does it all mean?
But now, let me pause to give a crucial disclaimer:
This movie is very, very weird. It is not a conventional Hollywood wide-release popcorn type affair. I’m amazed that it was even playing at the multiplex where we saw it. James Franco and the sea of breasts must be making its wide release commercially feasible, but this is really more of an arthouse film.
If I had seen it when I was the age of the spring breakers, I probably would have been like, “WHAT???!!!” And if I had gone to the movie expecting something more conventional and mainstream, I would have left so mad!
So if you go to this movie, go in as I did, expecting it to be unusual.
Although there is a story being told, narrative is not really the driving force here. In some ways, Spring Breakers feels like a long music video, or a moving piece of studio art. There’s not that much dialogue, and key phrases are repeated again and again, echoing across scenes often long before we ever see one of the characters actually delivering the line to other characters in a scene.
The film is incredibly stylized, and all the characters are off-putting. They’re often the opposite of sympathetic. (And not in a quirky, delightful Arrested Development way.) You’re not rooting for them, not really. It’s not a romantic comedy, but it’s also not a comedy where people have fun, crazy parties devoid of real world consequences. It’s really not a comedy at all, though I smiled through most of it. The movie shows you people partying, but it’s not celebrating the party spirit. In some ways, it feels as if it’s all one long, crazy dream.
But I liked it. I loved it, actually. Though I’d heard of Harmony Korine, of course, I’d never seen any of his films (except for Kids which he wrote but didn’t direct). Maybe I’ll have to watch others because Spring Breakers definitely made a positive impression.
I liked it so much partially because it tapped into thoughts that have just been coincidentally kicking around in my brain. Last weekend, while daydreaming during an early action sequence in G.I. Joe, I thought, “I couldn’t be a soldier, but they definitely make an important contribution. What do I contribute to society? I’m a very good consumer. Spending money always seems to make me happy, so I suppose I’m perpetuating capitalism and doing my part to help keep America what it’s become.” I started writing a little poem about that but forgot it when the ninjas showed up and the movie began to interest me. I think Harmony Korine finished that poem for me and called it Spring Breakers. Then he added a bunch of breasts bouncing eternally for no apparent reason, so it must have been a Romantic poem. (Imagine a beach scene on the side of a Grecian Urn. I am.)
There’s something wildly Bacchaic about the extremely long opening shot of revels on the beach. It’s very provocative (perhaps in a sexual way initially, but as it continues, more in the sense that it forces you to start thinking and asking all kinds of delightful questions.) It goes on so long that it’s deliberately disorienting. What’s familiar suddenly becomes strange, so you can’t take it for granted any longer.
For the longest time, the movie seemed like simple, blatant allegory. I mean, when you’ve got a character named Faith (the lone brunette among blonds, the conspicuous Christian, the one whose mundane reflections seem to echo and re-echo across practically every single scene until she completely dominates the auditory landscape), and then you introduce a character named Alien who keeps saying, “I’m from another world,” it’s pretty hard not to view the piece as an allegory. But to its credit, Spring Breakers turns out to be not all that simple in the end. The longer it goes on, the more complex it becomes.
Of course, in some ways, it is simple. There are all kinds of easily digestible moral takeaways. You could easily leave thinking, “No matter where you go, there you are” or the Biblical gem, “It is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean” or any number of platitudes or proverbs that the film nods at with wild abandon.
Personally, I think the final scene is particularly brilliant. It pairs beautifully with the opening—the initial scene of the beach followed by the history lecture in the classroom. Making a very apt statement about our society, it also invites the audience to think about what we have seen. In fact, it forces us to think—or else to leave the movie deeply unsatisfied and disappointed in its “failure” to be a typical Hollywood feature.
Best Scene Visually:
I enjoyed the wild revel on the beach revisited at the end, interspersed with the shots of Brit and Candy’s handiwork. I suppose quite a few things could be taken away from this, but I personally saw it as a skewering of our society and our bizarre values, a reminder that there is a cost for everything, and perhaps even a complement to the early scene in the classroom where the professor lectures about the end of slavery and hard-earned freedoms. In the end, the past and suggested future of Brit and Candy is almost ridiculously extreme—but it’s still uncomfortably like something entirely true and commonplace.
Best Scene:
Without a doubt, James Franco is the best part of this movie. Perhaps the strongest scene is the one in his bedroom when Alien shows off all his amazing possessions, and the girls like the loaded guns best and coerce him into liking them best, too. Alien’s audacious materialism and conspicuous consumerism really spoke to me. But then once the girls get the guns, the scene becomes even more bizarrely captivating. I’ll give credit where it’s due. This scene works because of James Franco. He’s very talented and performs with great panache to make the scene work the way it’s supposed to. In a rather bizarre twist—or what seemed like one to me—Alien somehow becomes not only the most charismatic, but somehow also the most sympathetic character remaining in the story. When we first meet him, he seems so menacing but gradually becomes increasingly endearing until he’s almost sweet (in a very twisted kind of way).
This subtle revelation of the real Alien makes it even more pointedly obvious that Selena Gomez’s Faith is a terrible judge of character. Faith would probably be safest in an inpatient facility or a convent (though you somehow just know British criminals or Whoopi Goldberg would show up in that convent and pull the wool over her eyes again).
Best Action Sequence:
When Alien and the girls go to avenge Cotty’s shooting, they definitely do it in style. (This scene is also very striking visually.)
Funniest Scene:
I absolutely love Alien’s performance of “Everytime” by Brittney Spears. The scene set to the music (not sure if enough different events occur to call it an actual montage) is just perfect and in some ways, the defining moment of the movie. It’s the second most amusing needless destruction of a wedding cake set to music I’ve ever seen. It reminded me of watching the Guns N’ Roses “November Rain” video with my cousin, who always asked, “Why do they jump into the cake? There’s no reason to do that! It’s just raining.”
Second Funniest Part:
When Selena Gomez’s Faith keeps saying, “I wish I could come back here next year with you, Grandma.”
My husband was like, “Is your grandma Madonna?”
Of course, part of what makes the movie effective is how bizarrely (almost grotesquely) inappropriate most of Faith’s comments are. (“It’s so nice here!” “Everyone is so sweet.”)
The Performances:
James Franco is the best. It’s too early in the year, probably, for him to get any kind of Oscar consideration for this, but he’s definitely the most captivating character in the movie, and that’s worth something. I loved practically every minute that he was on screen.
I also liked the guy playing his friend-turned-enemy, Archie (Gucchi Mane). That character didn’t get much development, but I think that was sort of the point.
Selena Gomez is good as Faith. It’s quite a departure from Wizards of Waverly Place (though I think she’s actually more feisty and interesting on that show than she is here since she plays the “good” one who seems totally out of place on the trip—and everywhere else, for that matter. She clearly needs psychiatric help, not a change of venue.)
I think the girl who plays Cotty is quite pretty, and obviously so does the director because she’s his wife. I think it’s her Kool-Aidy looking hair I liked.
Vanessa Hudgens doesn’t look right as a blonde, but I suppose that’s not her fault. She and Ashley Benson are really something else. They’re pretty much perfect as the two girls most suited to the lifestyle Alien introduces. I think they’re every parent’s nightmare when their daughter comes home and says, “I’m joining a sorority,” or “I’m taking a road trip with my friends!”
The Negatives:
Until James Franco gets there, the movie is kind of slow. Since it’s so peculiar, that’s not exactly bad. It’s certainly not unpleasant (though it makes agoraphobic me very glad that I never go to the beach on spring break), but I think we could all do without the scenes of the foursome riding around at night on scooters (although the “serene” scenes like that do make a pointed contrast to the way they got the money).
The biggest negative here is simply that Spring Breakers is not a typical Hollywood movie. I’m sure some people are going to see it not knowing that and get very annoyed and want their money back. (I can sympathize with them. I sympathize less with people who watch the movie and scream, “That’s appalling!” because that’s the point!)
I think a lot of people may legitimately not understand this movie. While I find a lot of meaning in it, I certainly can’t claim that I “get it” the way the director wants me to. I have no idea what Harmony Korine is actually trying to say. I know only what I took from the movie, and that was enough for me, but others may react differently. (On the phone this afternoon, when I told my sister we had decided to see Spring Breakers, she told me that Billy Bush of Access Hollywood hated it. That was endorsement enough for me!)
One possible flaw is that people who do not understand the movie may see it as racist and may see that as a positive quality. In that way, Spring Breakers may accidentally encourage viciousness.
And basically, it’s just not for everybody. I don’t think I would have liked this movie fifteen years ago. I’m not sure that I would have liked it ten years ago. (Well, I probably would have, though, because I just remembered that I’m four or five years older than I think. In fact, it’s my birthday today.)
These days, I go to so many movies that I’m thrilled to see something offbeat and different. But if you only go to a handful of movies a year, perhaps you’ll want something more mainstream. Spring Breakers is many things, but mainstream is not one of them.
Overall:
Watch out for entitled blondes. They have more fun at your expense. In Spring Breakers, we see the criminal underbelly of society but learn that it’s the sorority girl types who are the most deadly. (“Beware of Greeks baring tits!”)
James Franco is delightfully strange (yet bizarrely almost sympathetic) as Alien. His performance is the highlight of a film that has other notable strengths like cool visuals and a refreshingly unusual philosophical approach to the topic of spring break.
If you’re up for an offbeat film that will make you think, give Spring Breakers a try. But definitely do not under any circumstances take your children. (Abundant nudity and conspicuous drug use aside, the film’s skewed moral center will bewilder young viewers who are used to seeing sympathetic characters on screen.)