SPRING BREAKERS: MORE GIRLS GONE WILD THAN FORMER DISNEY STARS
If you’re expecting to see a light-hearted, fun at the beach with four best friends type of movie, you’re going to be quite disappointed — or more-so, shocked. Spring Breakers does follow four friends who go on the trip of their lives. However, even before getting to their destination, we see former Disney queens smoking out of bongs and robbing a restaurant with squirt guns.
The film is definitely a dark, edgy, twisted take on current pop culture. Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez and Rachel Korine escape reality and dive headfirst into the world of cocaine, girl-on-girl action, and well, care-free nudity. “I never thought I’d be able to smoke a bong,” said Selena Gomez at a press conference. Gomez’s character, Faith, is the only morale of the group, but she unfortunately exits the film at the halfway point.
The actresses actually spent quality girl-time together weeks before shooting even began. They created a genuine bond that showed through the screen. Although it may at first seem like another edition of Girls Gone Wild, director Harmony Korine twists the viewer’s mind with neons and repetition, creating such an illusion that you feel like you’re watching events unfold through someone else’s memory. Days later you may still have James Franco’s creepy voice stuck in your head slowly saying, “Spring break forever”. Franco brings a sick sense of satirical humor to the movie with his interpretation of the drug dealing rapper Alien who meets the girls when he bails them out of jail — thinking he’s about to turn them into his bitches. “We turned him into our bitch,” laughed Hudgens at a press conference.
Although Korine (Cotty) also exits the film a few scenes after Gomez, Hudgens (Candy) and Benson (Brit) stick around with who they seem to be falling in love with -Alien. The last-standing girls bring an almost frightening sociopathic intensity to everything they do, even when it comes to defending Alien at the end. With incredibly strange sequences, like the one of the girls dancing around while Franco plays Britney Spears’ “Everytime” on the piano, Spring Breakers quickly turns into a pop-culturally viewed gangster movie — with enemies, guns and pink ski masks. Gomez took to social media to wisely warn her underaged fans that this is in fact a rated-R movie. With the words of director Korine, “If you’re offended by it, great. If you love it, great.”
Spring Breakers opens March 22nd, watch the trailer here.
