More Mood than Movie

I had heard about Spring Breakers years ago, when the film first came out and everyone said it was “so shocking”. I ignored it at the time for a couple of reasons. The first was that it seemed like the shocking nature of the film was based on the fact that a couple of actresses with “pure as the driven snow” Disney reputations – Selena Gomez and Vanesa Hudgens – were not actresses I knew of or cared much about at the time. Them “going bad” in a “shocking” movie didn’t seem like something I had to bother about or care to see. General apathy for the concept certainly set in for me.

The other reason was, of course, James Franco. When the film came out the sexual harassment and assault allegations against the actor hadn’t yet come out (this was two years prior, in 2012, to those allegations), but even before those story were reported on it was pretty clear that Franco was a bit of a creep. He always seemed like he was gross, a sex pest just waiting to be allowed to undress everyone in the room with his eyes. The fact that the film in question hired him to play a creepy pervert who pushes himself on women, and that he also basically crafted the character himself, only supports that opinion of him. And then the stories came out all but confirming it.

So yeah, no matter how “shocking” the film could be, there was little reason for me to see the movie. Hell, even the shock factor wasn’t of that much interest; I like horror movies and have seen plenty of shocking and horrible things that would likely blow anything in this movie away. But the cult around this film has only grown since its release in 2012, and when the movie came up while I was browsing streaming services, I realized I had nothing better to do than see if this film actually lived up to the hype. Was it as shocking and illicit as everyone said it was? Absolutely not. Honestly, it’s all pretty damn boring.

The film focuses on four friends in college: Selena Gomez as Faith, Vanessa Hudgens as Candy, Ashley Benson as Brit, and Rachel Korine as Cotty. These four girls have their hearts set on going down to St. Petersburg, Florida, to attend all the wild Spring Break activities going on down there. All their friends have gone and, in fact, the college campus is all but abandoned, a ghost town that these four wander aimlessly around. The only problem is that they need money to go to Spring Break, and they’re a few hundred dollars short of funds.

That’s when Candy, Brit, and Cotty hatch a plan. They steal a professor’s car (he wasn’t using it anyway) and then, with masks and black-painted squirt guns, they rob a restaurant, stealing the money from all the patrons there. That gets them more than enough cash for Spring Break, and the four grab bus tickets, get a hotel room, and have a wild time partying on the beach. However, one party goes a bit too far and the four girls, along with a couple of thugs attending, are arrested for drug use. They’re charged with a misdemeanor and would have to spend a few days in jail, but then along comes Alien (Franco) who bails them out. All he wants in return is for the girls to party with him, but that invitation could lead them down a darker path as they get wrapped up in Alien’s world…

While Spring Breakers is certainly a movie, it’s hard to really call it a story. The film doesn’t have a standard structure, acting less like a well defined series of acts and more like a looping, twirling collection of scenes that, occasionally, move something you could pretend is the plot forward by degrees. There are plenty of scenes of people partying, scenes of people talking, scenes of people having sex, but it’s all repeated and layered again and again, making it hard at times to follow what’s even going on.

In a way I’d describe it as more an impression of a story than a traditional film. The movie, as written and directed by Harmony Korine, is going for a mood. It wants to evoke feelings, a sense of the darkness of Spring Break and the dangers of the constant party. It very much feels like you’re caught up in the drunken, drug fueled party at times, lost to time and unsure of where you are and where you’re going. You’re dragged along for the ride, wherever it goes, and you just have to trust there’s something there at the end for you to reach.

In that way I guess the film is a success, but that doesn’t make it interesting to watch. I was honestly bored most of the time watching Spring Breakers just because I was trapped there, waiting for anything to happen while dialogue was repeated over and over, scenes looped over themselves, and all sense of momentum had long since been abandoned. I get what the film is going for, I just don’t think it actually works. Mood is great but there has to be some sense of direction for the narrative, and Spring Breakers doesn’t seem to care about any of that. At 94 minutes it feels interminably long owing to its leaden pace and lack of desire to get where it’s going at any kind of speed.

The biggest issue with the film is certainly James Franco. While the film staggers around for much of its runtime, it absolutely comes to stop once Franco comes on the scene. He had a heavy hand in designing his character and devising his dialogue, and much of the time it feels like Franco was just let loose on set so he could improvise his lines as he saw fit. What it confirmed for me was two things: James Franco is terrible at improv and, also, James Franco is a terrible actor. Any time he was on screen I really wished the film would find anything else to focus on instead.

Credit where it’s due, though, the four female leads try their hardest to make up for the gaping void that was James Franco. Hudgens is charismatic in her role, basically taking the lead in the back half of the film, and it’s clear she relished playing a bad girl gone even darker. She wraps the other girls around her and takes charge of the film any time she can, and what little momentum and drive is in the movie comes from her and the other girls. I could have been happy with the film focusing better on her and putting far less emphasis on Alien.

Gomez, though, feels wasted in the movie. That’s because her character, Faith, is set up to be the “good girl” of the bunch and then, half way in, the film gets bored of her and shoves her out of the film entirely. You expect that Faith, who is the religious, honorable, nice girl of the set, is here so she can see the dark path and either commit to it or learn a lesson and pull her friends from the brink, but once the film ejects her, never to bring her back, you realize she was a narrative dead end the film didn’t really plan for at all.

That’s because despite having a script, I don’t think Spring Breakers was really planned out at all. It’s too loose, too improvised, with mood taking over from form and function. If Korine wanted to give us the vibe of Spring Break then, well, I guess they did since I found the whole film tiresome and boring. The constant partying seems fun until you’re trapped in it with nowhere to go and nothing to do, and after a while that would all get to be very tiresome. I guess the director was successful in their intent, but it’s makes for an awful film I don’t ever want to watch again.