- Script quality: 1/10, because I’m generous.
- Acting quality: 3/10, almost all of which is for Gomez.
- Overall feeling afterwards: I need to check my vaccination records.
If you’ve ever seen a movie by Harmony Korine before now, you already have some idea about how this whole “whoo-hoo spring breaaaaaak!!!” thing isn’t gonna turn out very well. Nothing that Korine touches ever turns out well. For the characters, for the box office, and, most importantly around here, for the viewer.
[ Watch the red band trailer for “SPRING BREAKERS” here. Eugh. ]
Just basing your opinions on the poster and trailer would be acceptable in the case of this, uh, “film,” but if you’re in need of further justification as to why you shouldn’t even pirate the damn thing, I’ve come prepared. I took notes while watching. It was the only thing that kept me going.
We open on a typical beach scene during Spring Break in Florida. Lots of topless young women who may or may not be of legal age, scenes of all of those funnels and such that spruce up the binge drinking experience, frat boys with backwards baseball hats groping every breast in sight while dancing badly to awful music. We then cut to a darkened college lecture hall (at first I thought it was high school, which would’ve fit Korine’s sensibilities more closely, but I guess he wanted this to get a wide release, so he opted for 18+ girls this time around), in which two snotty white girls are ignoring the lesson about civil rights in favour of drawing phallic doodles and passing notes back and forth, all of which are saying something about SPRING BREAAAAAAK!
In what is probably one of the more confusing cuts of the movie, we watch as the screen in the lecture hall becomes the focal point, and instead of getting footage of American history, we find ourselves suddenly inside the actual prayer group in which Selena Gomez’s character is participating. She’s playing a girl aptly named Faith, and she looks bored as hell as her painfully stereotypical Awesome Preacher Dude gets his teenage flock to join in some sort of God-affirming pop song, sitting in a circle on the floor and swaying, Kumbaya-style. As they leave the church basement for the night, Faith’s bible-thumping friends warn her against going away for SPRING BREAAAAK!!! with “those girls,” saying it will be spiritually dangerous for her, because “those girls” are bad. Faith half-heartedly defends them, saying they’ve known each other since they were little kids, and that it’ll be fine. Her thumper friends sigh and let her leave, but not without calling after her, “Pray while you’re in Florida, Faith! Pray hardcore!” I kid you not.
Next we meet Candy, played by Vanessa Hudgens, whom we’ve already seen naked online so nothing that happens with her will be terribly revelatory. Candy is a bottle-blonde, trashy-looking young lady who’s shown binge drinking alone in a filthy kitchen, wobbling around and spraying vodka down her throat via a squirt gun. It’s pretty sad.
So, great! We’ve now met our four heroines! (…that would be more accurate if I removed the “e” in the average Harmony Korine movie, but whatever.) These are the girls who are raring to go and desperately want to do something epic for SPRING BREAAAAAAK!
For no apparent reason we’re again treated to a montage of partying college kids, a basement bong-fest full of half-naked coeds, all of whom are drinking everything in sight, snorting various substances, gambling… The only thing missing is a giant neon sign flashing over their heads declaring them “BAD KIDS.” It’s impossible to tell if any of our four heroines are at this party, but it’s also impossible to care. The impression is that this is all the fun our girls will be missing if they don’t get their sh*t together and do something epic for SPRING BREAAAAAAK!!!
It’s here that we’re treated to the first of literally dozens of random gunshot sound effects as the scene changes to the girls’ dormitory. I guess it’s Korine’s auditory equivalent to a swipe-screen or something.
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