Spring Break!!!
Spring Break forever. That's the motto of this movie, so aptly titled Spring Breakers, if only because all I can gather from any of it is that spring break is happening somewhere, and its a movie designed not to entertain, but to break the spirit of anyone who dares to watch it. This movie is insufferable, if you can even call it a movie, as I'm not entirely sure I didn't just watch someone's NSFW vacation reel interspersed with a few rap videos. Spring break forever, because you've just entered a dark pocket universe where time, sensible narrative structure, and basic human decency have no meaning.
Spring Breakers is the story of four
girls who rob a restaurant to afford a trip to Florida for Spring
Break, marking the beginning of what turns into a burgeoning life of
crime and debauchery amid rival rappers, or criminals, or criminal
rappers...or something. This may have been a cogent analysis or even
a biting satire of the current teenage generation's value system, if
any of it was told in a way that even paid lip service to the
cardinal rule of filmmaking, which despite a wide latitude that has
been exploited by many great directors over the years, still requires
that however you may wish to tell your story, you still need to
actually be telling one.
Where to begin? Well, I suppose before
we even get to what little passes for actual plot and character
development, the style needs to be addressed, as this is Harmony
Korine, the director of Gummo famous for making movies that defy
conventions (regardless of whether said conventions are there for a
reason). First, the editing, which I think I'm supposed to take as
edgy or avant garde, but just comes across as a clear attempt to hide
the lack of substantive storytelling, repeating scenes and
overlapping narration that is never as profound as the movie thinks
it is and only serves to distort one's sense of the passage of time,
not in a way that enhances the experience like in say Memento or Pulp
Fiction, but purely to pad out what is obviously a completely shallow
exercise.
And speaking of narration, If I didn't
know any better, I'd say it was entirely possible that there might be
a good movie in here somewhere that I completely missed, drowned out
by the annoying confluence of mumbly dialogue and an obtrusive
techno-garbage soundtrack. At times I began to wonder if the really
deep and meaningful things I was supposed to be getting from all this
were simply being lost under all the Skrillex, until I actually did
manage to hear some of what these characters were saying, and I
realized how truly vapid it all was. As if I didn't glean that
already from the endless parade of skimpy bikinis, mimed fellatio, and
general jackassery on display.
It all just seems so fake to me. Maybe
because I'm not one of those people who ever saw spring break as an
excuse for reckless abandon, I just don't get it, but watching what
ultimately amounts to a Girls Gone Wild-esque montage, even as the
party scenes are depicted somewhat realistically, it always seems
like the people involved are aware of the attention placed upon, and
are not so much having fun, but engaging in a performance of having
fun. I don't just mean that in the context of this movie, but in the
wider context of spring breakers in general. Are these people
actually having fun doing this stuff? Are they so devoid of
intellectual complexity, so unaware of the true life of the mind that
this is what passes for a good time, or are they just keeping up
appearances? I'd say maybe that was the point, but I don't want to
give this movie that much credit.
At the same time, fakery and image does
appear to be at the heart of this movie, at least in the sense that
the main characters all seem to be play acting a level of toughness
beyond what they should be capable of. The essential premise revolves
around waify college girls turned hardcore criminals out of a need to
party, and their Obi Wan is the lamest of white rappers who seems to
indulge in the trappings of the gangsta lifestyle with all the nerdy
glee of a cosplayer (or maybe I just think that because he's played
by James Franco, who never fits into any role that isn't James Franco). Again, I might say
that this was on purpose, except that their lack of authenticity is
never challenged, and ultimately validated, even as many of them give
up or even die throughout the course of the film.
None of this analysis matters in the
face of what is at its core one of the most powerfully useless wastes
of film I've ever seen. Even the Twilight parody Breaking Wind, as
soul crushingly bad as it was, had a point. At least I could see the
audience for it. I don't know who this movie would appeal to or who
its trying to appeal to, and if I let myself believe that there is
actually a subset of teenagers that can fully relate to any of this,
I might just check out completely, because if this is where the next
generation is coming from, God help us all. Spring Breakers isn't so
much a movie as it is the cinematic equivalent of one of those Fear
Factor tests where Joe Rogan dares you to eat horse scrotum, except
without the possibility of a cash payout at the end of it. I watched
it because I review movies as a hobby. You most likely don't have
this motivation, so do yourself a favor and stay as far away as
possible.
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