Director: Harmony Korine
Writer: Harmony Korine
Cinematography: Benoit Debie
Editor: Douglas Crise
Music: Cliff Martinez and Skrillex
Notable Cast: James Franco, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Jeff Jarrett, Sydney & Thurman Sewell
I’ve never been a big Harmony Korine guy. I saw Kids when it came out, and thought it was fine, didn’t go nuts like a lot of folx. And whatever I did see out of him subsequently just didn’t get me going. Had no interest in Gummo, or Julien Donkey-Boy, or Mister Lonely, or… well, you get the picture.
But then 2012 rolled around, and I was seeing these interesting stills of James Franco as a certified fresh wigger (am I allowed to use that word? Should I capitalize the “w,” like they do with the “b” in black after the untimely demise of Saint George Floyd? Hard to keep up with the speech codes these days…).
I had to admit, my interest was piqued. And then I saw some other images, neon-soaked Floridian underworld trashbag shit, and my interest was piqued further. And then Korine got Cliff Martinez to do the music. Very, very hard to go wrong with Martinez on the soundscape beat.
But then…
It, quite unfortunately, featured Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, two truly awful actresses, as two of the four leads. This was a problem. A major fucking problem. This movie LOOKS like it could be dynamite, but then I see these two on the poster and… my dick goes limp.
My spirit? Sapped.
My will to live? Gone.
This movie has to be pretty fucking great to overcome these two, especially Gomez. Hudgens is fine, I guess, as far as it goes. Ugly as shit, but whatever.
Gomez, though, is truly awful. Simply put, she can’t act. No screen presence, fake emotions, stilted bullshit.
And it’s all on horrific display here.
But Franco.
We got Franco.
Prime Franco, before all the bullshit.
Can his acting chops and Korine’s directing chops overcome these truly terrible casting choices?
Only one way to find out…
1ST 5 MINUTES
I love how the credits start, over black, with this very cool font made up of, I think, neon palm trees, as we hear the sounds of the ocean on the soundtrack. Very nice, peaceful, zen way to start a gonzo flick like this.
As soon as we see the title, Spring Breakers, we hear the unmistakable beats of Skrillex fill the soundtrack (amazing music choice here), as we then cut to various Spring Break revelers.
It’s all a very “MTV in the ‘90s” kind of vibe, with college aged men and women, in great shape, frolicking in their bikinis and board shorts, drinking booze and having a blast. Very cliché, “normal” version of a wild Spring Break.
Then the music turns darker, and the images on screen reflect this shift, as we now see women with their tits out and dudes using beer bottles as penises to “pee” into girls’ mouths and all manner of debauchery as one set of tits after another comes shaking across the screen, slathered in foamy beer suds.
We’ve gone from MTV to Girls Gone Wild (do people even know what that is anymore?) quicker than you can say “blowjob.”
It’s quite the open.
Talk about a slap in the face! This is how you grab an audience right up front.
As the father of a daughter, this is truly rough shit. Just the “innocent” clips we start with are bad enough, but once you see the all-out bacchanalia, you are truly in no man’s land. It’s one thing to imagine what your little girl might be doing, but to see it right in front of you? My word… That’s a hard pill to swallow (though nothing compared to later…).
Korine shoots the shit out of these segments and expertly captures the feeling the words “spring break” conjure in your head. The way all the colors pop, along with the slow-motion revelry and bouncing tits, instantly puts you in a very specific time and very specific place.
It’s a brilliant way to open the film, showcasing both the light and the dark aspects of Spring Break, set to insanely propulsive, inventive music from Skrillex, someone I usually don’t grok to, but here, his work is sublime, and has a real emotional weight to it. Forever after, this opening tune IS Spring Break to me.
Far as I am concerned, this 1ST 5 is already a success and there’s no way I’m taking this off. But for the sake of the written word, let’s continue.
Suddenly the music drops out and we get a smash cut to our titular Spring Breakers, who are decidedly NOT at Spring Break, but rather, stuck in their dorms and classrooms, and in Gomez’s case, church with an excited youth pastor.
This stuff is fine as far as it goes, but who cares?
No Franco, no dice.
I’ve already seen enough to know I want to keep watching, just to get to Franco.
Everything right now is about enduring till we get to Franco.
In Franco We Trust!
The rest of the flick
And endure we do! We don’t see ol’ Jimmy F until about 20 minutes in, when the girls, who finally made it to Spring Break, catch him in a small concert on the beach as he sings his classic hit, Hangin’ Wit Dem Dope Boys. The movie doesn’t start until Franco shows up here, and while we won’t see him again for another 30 minutes (a crime), we at least know we got dope shit coming up.
As it is, this debut of his character is amazing. He’s singing/rapping a song that should be bad, but is actually kind of catchy (he’s “blowing up” on YouTube), and then segues into banter about Spring Break with the audience, where he says the word “y’all” at the end of every sentence, almost like a spell.
It’s so good.
Korine also mixes in some low resolution camcorder images here to great effect. As I said, dope shit.
Speaking of dope shit, I can only really think of two non-Franco scenes in these early goings that really work. Most of the 4 girls bumming around college/Florida is pretty rote and boring. It’s kind of hard to get through in spots, as it becomes very repetitive. None of these chicks, including the gorgeous Ashley Benson, have a lick of screen presence. Don’t give a fuck about any of them.
They’re not funny, they’re not cute, they’re not compelling. They’re actually annoying, if I’m being frank Stallone. Korine really stretches us to our limit with these 4 until introducing James Franco’s Alien proper, about halfway through the flick, when he bails the four bikini clad broads out of jail.
The first non-Franco standout is the sequence where the girls (sans Gomez) rob a diner. I love how the camera stays outside the restaurant, in the car with Korine’s wife, as it circles around the building, and we catch only glimpses of the robbery through the windows. Very, very well done.
Excellent use of cinema that unfortunately gets undercut a bit later when they relate the robbery to Gomez, and then cut to them inside the diner and we hear and see up close what they were doing.
Much better to leave this robbery unheard and barely seen.
The only other great sequence in the film that doesn’t feature Franco is when the four girls are partying at a local motel, sex and drugs everywhere, the atmosphere thick with sin.
Korine does this dope visual effect where these grainy images of them partying morph and stretch and contort with the music (a brilliant Skrillex remix of a Birdy Nam Nam song, Goin’ In), emulating the feeling of being in this room, with these people, losing yourself in the narcotic fueled high of the moment.
It’s extremely effective.
Especially the way he intercuts the party with the aftermath of them getting arrested and thrown in jail. Great shit.
I know people have attacked this film as one long music video. Those people anti-art morons. What is cinema if not image and sound? I find stretches of this film to be cinema in its purest form, and as such, transcendent.
Korine has coined a phrase for this type of film, dubbing it a “liquid narrative.”
And as soon as you hear that phrase, and watch this film, you know exactly what he means. Hard to define, but yes, this film is most assuredly a liquid narrative. The way it flows from one moment to the next while having flashbacks and flash-forwards feels dreamlike and fluid, moving this way and that with the currents and the vibes and the feelings.
Nothing quite feels like this film.
And this film IS James Franco. As I alluded to above, the movie doesn’t start until his entrance at the beach concert, and it doesn’t truly come alive until Selena Gomez’s character, Faith, leaves early, thankfully. It’s quite a moment in the film knowing this total charisma black hole is being shuffled off the screen midway through, never to return!!!
The movie goes next level once she is gone, and never looks back.
No matter how much the opening scenes at the beach present a father’s worst nightmare, it’s nothing compared to the drug and stripper fueled underworld Alien introduces the girls to.
As Alien says, this shit is “straight gangsta!”
Scary, dirty, intimidating, strange.
As his name suggests, Alien brings them to another world.
Which they, maybe not so shockingly, fit right into.
Which is why the whole Selena Gomez character makes no sense when you think about it. Why is she hanging with these three nutbags? What do they have in common? What are the bonds of this friendship? The other three all seem to roll their eyes at Gomez and mock her studied innocence.
Her character’s inclusion adds nothing to the proceedings. Nothing.
The film is quite interesting in how it portrays these girls. Owing to the heist they pull off in the first act, it’s clear they’re all sociopaths before they ever set eyes on Alien.
And instead of being intimidated by him and his underworld, they seem to merely use him as an entry point to fulfill their deeper, darker desires.
Instead of an ally, he is a tool. An implement. A mechanism which opens the world they really want to inhabit.
Or at least think they want to inhabit.
Once Franco takes over, this movie hits another level and keeps going up from there. His “Look at my shit” monologue is an instant classic in the annals of independent cinema.
It’s no surprise my Favorite Line from the film is in this scene. Amidst “look at my shit!” repeated endlessly during this bravura performance of showing off all his… well, shit, he utters the absolutely hilarious, “I got my dark tannin’ oil. Lay out by the pool, put on my dark tannin’ oil.”
Fucking genius.
From money to guns to Scarface on repeat to combining Calvin Klein colognes, he’s got it all.
Or does he?
Franco plays this character so perfectly with all the shades he gives him. We have a guy who has classic, tough, dirty south, gangsta looks, with the cornrows and the grill, but this scene shows how insecure he is, despite all his “success.”
He still has a hole inside him to fill.
He desperately wants these girls to think well of him, and performs for them, almost like a peacock strutting his plumage to attract a mate.
His bed even resembles the shape of a peacock.
And the way “look at my shit!” segues into them all in Alien’s convertible, slithering down the road at night, set to an instrumental of Rick Ross’s Big Bank?
Damn!
Propulsive, adrenaline fueled, neon soaked, north Florida trash.
How are you not digging this?!
It’s never clear if Franco even fucks any of these birds, but their chemistry together is off the charts. I love when they turn the tables on him and start making him blow their gun like it’s a giant, metal phallus.
Franco is always slightly scared of these chicks, and is never truly sure what their intentions are.
It’s amazing. Very unexpected.
Take my Favorite Scene, Franco is out on his patio, overlooking the Gulf of America (aw, what’s the matter, baby, are you triggered? Do you need time to sit with it and process? 😊), playing a giant white piano as the three remaining girls slowly approach him wearing ski masks and brandishing shotguns.
The look on Franco’s face as he gives them the side eye, not sure if they are about to blow his brains out, is amazing. People say this performance is caricature, that he’s not playing a real human.
I beg to differ.
Franco gives a monumentally towering performance here as an insecure white kid from a black neighborhood playing at gangster in a vain attempt to justify his very existence.
Award worthy acting from Franco, who has never been better.
As he lightly taps the keys, the women make a request of him, to play something sweet and uplifting, “fucking inspiring.”
Of all the songs he could choose from, he decides to play a Britney Spears song, Everytime. A striking choice, considering how soft and tender the song is, all about heartbreak and longing for peace and love.
It shows how vulnerable Alien is that this is the song he’s memorized, both lyrically and musically. Would you expect a dude who brags about his machine guns and drug running to love a song like this and be able to play it by heart?
Such an unexpectedly beautiful, poignant moment. The song and sequence are so good.
As Franco begins to play expertly on the piano, you can’t help but laugh, it’s amazing as he sings this romantic ballad, raw and unfiltered.
Franco, you mad devil!
The real version by Britney slowly takes over on the soundtrack as we segue into a montage of Franco and the girls robbing, beating and torturing various Spring Breakers, intercut with them dancing and twirling waterside with the shotguns.
Incredible sequence, scored beautifully by Britney’s vocals. Is this her best song? It is now!
One of my favorite recurring devices Korine employs as the film gets darker and darker, is the occasional cut back to those cheerful, cliché, Spring Break scenes he started the film with.
I am in a deep and everlasting love with that juxtaposition, always deployed at the most key, perfect moments in the film.
With James Franco whispering “Spring Break, Spring Break, Spring Break forever…”
Sublime. Korine and editor Douglas Krise were clearly and obviously in a flow in that edit suite.
Liquid narrative indeed!
The plot, nominal as it is, concerns Alien’s feud with Archie, played by rapper Gucci Mane. This subplot is fine as far as it goes, especially in motivating the end fight. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but the milieu Korine draws has a very particular feel.
A lot of this movie is feel.
The feeling of the neon.
The feeling of the music, whether it’s Martinez, Skrillex, Waka Flocka Flame or Gucci Mane himself.
The feeling of the shots and the pace of the editing.
It’s an intoxicating concoction. You feel transported to another realm while watching this. The mise en scène is all enveloping and all encompassing.
Take when Alien and the two remaining girls ride at night in the speedboat to Archie’s mansion, armed to the teeth, neon reflections glowing as they cut through the black water… it’s SO good.
I almost want to see a dope, serious Miami Vice flick directed by Harmony Korine now. His command of light and frame in this film are off the charts. I just love this simple shot of them on the boat, with Cliff Martinez’s enthralling score on the soundtrack. I remember sitting in the theater being in Heaven at this moment.
And how amazing is the slow motion shot as they run up the purple, glowing dock to attack Archie’s gang?
Feels like they’re on a different planet. An alien planet. Pun intended.
Intoxicating, with Franco repeating “seems like a dream” over and over on the soundtrack, right before he gets shot and killed, the first casualty of this gang war, dead before the real battle even occurred.
Such a great choice killing him here. So anti-climactic, yet perfect. Alien could not have died any other way, yet I did not see this coming, at all.
That’s cinema.
Love how the girls just casually look at his dead body before continuing with the mission, their voiceover kicking in, talking about how fulfilling and enriching this trip was, a sort of letter to Mom and Dad back home conceit that works like gangbusters! I love it!
Works so much better here than when they used a similar device earlier with Gomez and her abuela. There, it’s weak and forced. Here? Transcendent, as they machine gun down gansta after gangsta while waxing poetic.
And how great is that shot of their asses in the neon bikinis as they run up the dock?
Same with the last shot in the film, my Favorite Shot actually, as the girls run back to the boat, they stop to bid farewell to Alien, and each give his dead body a kiss on the lips, before continuing with the escape.
The camera pans with them and we watch them run, upside down, trotting in slow motion, the strings of their neon bikinis swaying with each step. Beautiful imagery throughout, but boy does this whole neon lit sequence take the cake, with this amazing inverted shot being the capper.
What a movie. Though curiously sexless given the subject matter: four crazy, dick hungry, bikini clad chicks at Spring Break. There’s nary an erection to be had. I guess one late scene in a pool could classify as a sex scene, but it seems more like humping, and the main girls do not get naked, save for Korine’s wife, who is the last one in the group anyone wants to see naked.
For an exploitation level type of film, the lack of tits and ass, despite the multiple strip club scenes, is a bit of a sin. Especially in the early going, a bit more T&A would’ve gone a long way to paper over how boring all that shit was.
But on a raw level, sonically and visually… the film is out of this world. Yes, anytime the focus is on the women, the film usually suffers, but Franco is such a force of nature here, that he subsumes and absorbs all around him, like a white dwarf, brighter than anything around him, but too unstable, and ultimately too hot to last.
He overwhelms the film with his aura, and despite being in only half of it, dominates your memory of this gonzo flick as you walk out of the theater.
Maybe not a great film overall (that opening act is just too long), but James Franco is great in it, and not to be missed, or slept on.
Once in a lifetime performance.
Unforgettable.
Indelible.
Electric.
The One Sheet
This movie had an intense and oftentimes very successful marketing campaign, but it’s uneven, as we’ll see right away with the first poster, all our leads, framed sideways on the poster, Franco pointing a gun at us. Nice use of colors, and the image of the actors is okay, but no tagline.
Average at best.
Now THIS is what I am talking about! One of my favorite posters of the last 20 years. A simple image of a single girl in a ski mask, holding a gun, standing on Archie’s neon dock, the city skyline behind her.
The tagline a simple, “Wish you were here.”
YES!!! Fucking amazing. Great, great poster. If you see the movie based on this poster, you will be happy. Very happy.
I also LOVE this next poster, very clever and inventive. The girls are going on vacation, so of course they’ll lay out all the items they’re going to pack. This poster is fun and very cheeky.
Marketing team must have been popping Adderall like it was nobody’s business.
This next poster is a variation on the first one, but I like the imagery better, I like the way they write the title, and the tagline is a banger, “A little sun can bring out your dark side.”
Solid one sheet.
I really like this Asian market poster with the whole gang standing in front of a trashy convenience store at night. Great composition, with the lights of the store behind them almost blown out they’re so overexposed.
This is a hot poster.
These two UK character features for Franco and the beautiful Ashley Benson are pretty cool. I like how in your face they are, and any chance to ogle Benson is a welcome chance!
And what’s not to love about this poster, featuring the neon baked asses of two of our leads, guns by their side?
It must be easy to make good posters when you have such a smorgasbord of dope visuals to choose from.
But this last one might be my favorite. Immortalizing the best scene in the film, it’s a lovely shot of Franco at his outdoor piano, the girls in ski masks around him, as the sun sets in the background. I also dig the font used for the title.
Excellent poster. Evocative and haunting, like the Britney Spears infused sequence behind it.
And that does it for the 1ST 5 Minutes of Harmony Korine’s uneven, but utterly breathtaking, Spring Breakers, featuring a once in a lifetime, out of his mind performance from James Franco, who, let’s be honest, can sometimes phone shit in.
Not so here.
He commits to the bit, as they say, and gives us one of cinema’s great antiheroes, an insecure man stuck in childhood dreams and grievances, whose boasts about his success sound less like bragging, and more like pleading.
A timeless symbol of a very specific 2012 Florida man.
In the end, we’ll always have “Spring Break… Spring Break… Spring Break forever…”
See you in two oiled up pairs of tits…