Spring Breakers

By the final shot of 2012's SPRING BREAKERS, I was applauding writer/director Harmony Korine for his clear eyed treatise on the American Dream.  Or what many would describe it as.  I might go as far as to say that Harmony was more successful than Scorsese, who created another such study of excess the same year called THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.  Many watch these films and cheer.  They are unable or unwilling to recognize that the behavior is not being celebrated, even as it is presented in a highly colorful fashion and may even look like fun in certain moments.  Watch a movie like this in a theater with people such as this.  It can be awesomely depressing and frightening.

Or, it can be a party.  Depends on your tolerances.  I had my share of wild nights (sorry, no details to divulge at this time) in earlier days but nothing like this.  I never had topless beach bunnies on my shoulders.  I never gulped alcohol from a funnel and hose.  I never did lines of coke off a mirror.  Spring Break was a big deal in Ft. Lauderdale for many years until the elderly and uptight politicians chased the kids out.  Then Daytona Beach got the action.  I'm sure the displays in this film are accurate, maybe even tamer than reality.  For more reserved viewers, it will be unsettling and sad.  Others who have moved on in life may at least smile as their own memories of their youth will be stoked.    Either way, SPRING BREAKERS, with its endless montages and purposeful repetition, is one of the most vivid depictions of the pursuit of the elusive brass ring I've seen.

Four college girls are bored.  They haven't scraped enough funds to leave campus and head for the sun.  They seem fairly wild, though one Faith (Selena Gomez) is ostensibly a Christian as she attends meetings where the youth leader screams about getting jacked with Jesus. One night, Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), and Cotty (Rachel Korine) rob a diner with a water gun and rubber hammers. Big score.  They steal their professor's car.  The quartet head to St. Petersburg and immediately enjoy days and nights of revelry.  We hear their voiceovers and calls home.  They've found paradise.  They're seeing more of the world.  Sure, everyone needs a change of scenery.

Perhaps inevitably, they get arrested.  But there's that baller named "Alien" (an occasionally over the top James Franco) who bails them out.  He's a rapper who fancies himself a West Coast Tony Montana, complete with stacks of cash and automatic weapons on his bed.  The girls are enthralled by this force of nature, but Faith freaks out and catches a bus home.

The rest? You're on your own.  For many, the movie really kicks into high gear when we meet Big Arch (Gucci Mane), Alien's childhood friend and now criminal rival.  Arch feels he owns the city and its drug trade.  Alien wants to put the girls to work.  Ya know, be yo' own boss! American Dream, baybeee!

Are we in for another hip hop street epic?  Er, yes, perhaps, but Harmony doesn't shoot it for cheap thrills (some have even described the movie's style as Malick-like!).  None of it goes for the easy money shots, actually, despite lots of nudity and sprays of ammunition.  There is a rendition of a Britney Spears song on a piano (played by Alien), that somehow is one of the best scenes I've watched in some time.  The final half hour approaches mastery, in my opinion.  Harmony Korine's earlier work has been iffy, but SPRING BREAKERS, in all its pastel colored rendering of hell, nails its targets so accurately it's a trifle startling.