It would be tempting for anyone to judge "Spring Breakers" sight unseen for any number of reasons. Squeaky clean ex-Disney girls vamping it up on spring break, James Franco as a Scarface-idolizing gangster (complete with grill), directed by a guy who makes borderline unwatchable trash.
The best thing you can do before watching "Spring Breakers" is to immediately let go of any of those preconceptions (or any others) and just take it all in. And believe me, there's a lot.
What "Spring Breakers" truly is is a fable. It's about bored young people turning to over-stimulation to "find themselves" and getting in over their heads, big time. It's a generation raised on rap music and movies like "Scarface" that glamorize criminality, who covet the "play hard" lifestyle--"Spring break forever", as the film's mantra goes--but are woefully unprepared for its consequences. And it is by far one of the most gut-wrenching, riveting movies I've seen in a long time.
Sure, there's titilation, in the form of dizzying montages of hard partying, drinking and drug use, and all sorts of lewd acts, but it serves a purpose: to draw you into the world our lead characters get sucked into. This is the gateway, the entrance to the rabbit hole of temptation and stimulation, where more is never enough until it's too much. The movie really kicks into gear when the girls at the center of the story are bailed out by rapper/drug dealer named Alien (James Franco at his best), who takes the girls under his wing and into his world. Events earlier in the movie make their path pretty clear, but it's not until the film's harrowing conclusion that they--and we--learn how far "too far" truly is.
While it would have been interesting to see the film's moral center have more of an impact on its climax (let's just say it disappears about halfway through), "Spring Breakers" will keep you riveted until it fades to black. It has the potential to be this generation's "Natural Born Killers", with a message arguably more relatable and impactful than that film had. Perhaps the biggest surprise is how Harmony Korine has taken his inclination to push boundaries and shock and disturb (see "Gummo"--or better yet, don't) and apply an actual narrative to it, to wild success. This is a movie whose visuals and message will stick with you for a long time. "Spring Breakers" is a shocking, disturbing, exhilarating, twisted ride, and one absolutely worth taking.
The best thing you can do before watching "Spring Breakers" is to immediately let go of any of those preconceptions (or any others) and just take it all in. And believe me, there's a lot.
What "Spring Breakers" truly is is a fable. It's about bored young people turning to over-stimulation to "find themselves" and getting in over their heads, big time. It's a generation raised on rap music and movies like "Scarface" that glamorize criminality, who covet the "play hard" lifestyle--"Spring break forever", as the film's mantra goes--but are woefully unprepared for its consequences. And it is by far one of the most gut-wrenching, riveting movies I've seen in a long time.
Sure, there's titilation, in the form of dizzying montages of hard partying, drinking and drug use, and all sorts of lewd acts, but it serves a purpose: to draw you into the world our lead characters get sucked into. This is the gateway, the entrance to the rabbit hole of temptation and stimulation, where more is never enough until it's too much. The movie really kicks into gear when the girls at the center of the story are bailed out by rapper/drug dealer named Alien (James Franco at his best), who takes the girls under his wing and into his world. Events earlier in the movie make their path pretty clear, but it's not until the film's harrowing conclusion that they--and we--learn how far "too far" truly is.
While it would have been interesting to see the film's moral center have more of an impact on its climax (let's just say it disappears about halfway through), "Spring Breakers" will keep you riveted until it fades to black. It has the potential to be this generation's "Natural Born Killers", with a message arguably more relatable and impactful than that film had. Perhaps the biggest surprise is how Harmony Korine has taken his inclination to push boundaries and shock and disturb (see "Gummo"--or better yet, don't) and apply an actual narrative to it, to wild success. This is a movie whose visuals and message will stick with you for a long time. "Spring Breakers" is a shocking, disturbing, exhilarating, twisted ride, and one absolutely worth taking.
