Walking into “Spring Breakers” I knew two things — it was a
Harmony Korine film, and former Disney teen queens Vanessa Hudgens (who
hasn’t been so innocent recently) and Selena Gomez flaunt around in bikinis for
90 minutes. But walking out the only thing I was thinking about was James
Franco’s performance. Alien is a white boy living in a black man’s world, but
damn if he doesn’t suck you in with his tantalizing words and 24k gold smile —
someone give Franco an award for this role.
The
story follows four college girls — Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Hudgens), Faith
(Gomez) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, wife of the director) — who need to escape
their mundane college party lifestyle for the fun and sun of spring break. But
with no funds, all hope is ruined. They decide to don ski masks and rob a
restaurant with water guns. With cash spilling out of their cutoff shorts, the
girl’s head to Florida and discover it to be the paradise they always dreamed
of. The sun is shinning and the girls are topless (lots and lots of topless
girls). They do all the normal spring break things — smoke weed, drink beer,
ride around with reckless abandon on scooters — but after snorting cocaine off
the body of naked female at a wild and overly crowded party, the girls are
arrested. With their funds depleted, the girls are forced to stay in jail. That
is, until their cornrowed knight in shining armor shows up and bails them out.
The girls are immediately sucked into Alien’s lifestyle —
fast cars, lots of drugs and piles of cash — and soon find themselves a long
way from the tourist beaches. Faith is the first one to buckle and cries to her
friends that she wants to go home. She is a church going girl whose senses were
awakened upon arrival, but after an arrest and a creepy Alien encounter (all
Franco does is touch her face and talk real close, but damn is it creepy), she
packs up and heads home on a bus. The three other girls continue on with their
gangsta lifestyle, until it becomes too real when a rival drug dealer (played
by rapper Gucci Mane) shoots Cotty in a driveby. Once again, she too heads home
on a bus, but this time with a flesh wound. Brit and Candy stay, becoming a
power trio with Alien, creating the films climax.
There were plenty of interesting performances, but Franco
really sold this movie for me. He is such a chameleon and I set there in
wonderment watching him snarl about “his shit.” He is totally worth the price
of admission, especially when he twinkles away on a white piano overlooking the
water and busts out a Britney Spears ballad, with the girls singing along. The
scene intertwines the group singing the soft ballad with cuts of the same group
forcefully robbing people. Never did I make the perfect connection of armed
robbery and Britney Spears until now.
“Spring
Breakers” is a chaotic fever dream that invokes your senses—you see the tits glowing in the neon, hear the bass pounding and can smell the blunt burning—and keeps you
enthralled in the grimy slice of life.
