A Ghoul Versus Spring Breakers

"Dueling Movies: The Bling Ring Vs. Spring Breakers!"

Click here for The Bling Ring review!

This is going to be a fun one!  And by fun, I mean "this movie is likely going to be worse than a box of chocolates full of angry killer bees".  Spring Breakers is technically the major league debut of writer/director Harmony Korine, an “avant garde” film maker who loves his shock value. LOVES IT. Loves it more than Zack Snyder loves slow motion or JJ Abrams loves lens flares.

His films often specialize in depicting the broken lives of young people living below the poverty level and the horrible, horrible actions they carry out. But since he's “avant garde”, he always does bizarre film techniques and features disturbingly grotesque imagery... almost ALWAYS for he sake of being bizarre and grotesque.

His films cover subjects such as:

-animal abuse and killing for no good reason

-teenagers taking copious amounts of drugs, engaging in tons of consensual and non-consensual sex, and committing remorseless acts of violence... for no good reason
-cross dressing... for no good reason
-rampant mental disorders, including my favourite of a man trying to whore out his sister who has Downs Syndrome
-“Satanic” imagery, necrophilia, incest... sigh. I think you get the picture. I'm pretty sure you can also tell I'm not what you would call a fan of his work, as I refer to Harmony Korine as the “Indie Michael Bay”. Whereas Bay goes for the biggest and explodiest spectacle possible on the main stage, Korine goes for the most fucked up and grossest spectacle possible on the small stage.

I have NO idea how a man like Korine got handed the reins for a nationwide film release starring two very famous Disney Channel pop stars (one of whom is one of the biggest singers in the world right now), and I didn't feel like researching it because reading about Korine for any amount of time starts making my stomach turn.  Break out the bikinis, get ready for spring break- SPRING BREAK! WHOOOOO!!!!!- and settle in for A Ghoul Versus Spring Breakers!

As the film begins I almost think I forgot to take the Bling Ring out of the blu-ray player because the logo for A24 Films pops up in the opening credits, just like it did in Sophia Coppola's “story” about girls gone bad.

Skrillex's “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” kicks spring break off over a music video of the hottest slow motion beach party EVAR! Lots of loving-crafted shots of the groins of men and women follow. We then cut to a college somewhere where we meet two of our heroines sitting through a lecture about civil rights and being bored out of their minds. They amuse themselves by writing messages for each other about penises. Uh huh...

Trying to find a compelling opening, the film shifts to... TNA wrestler Jeff Jarrett?!? Bloody Hell these Dueling Movies are dragging some weird cameos out of the woodwork! Gavin Rossdale, Jeff Jarrett, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that former NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart shows up next!  Jeff is a preacher giving a sermon for a group of Christian college kids, including Selena Gomez. He reads a verse from I Corinthians 10:13: “But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”, which I'm sure IN NO WAY is foreshadowing. Nope, not one bit.

It should be no surprise for a man who “acts” on a daily basis for a near year-round basis, but Jeff DEFINITELY has a killer presence here and I do believe this scene qualifies as “scene stealing”. This always makes me wonder why Hollywood doesn't cast professional wrestlers in movies that DON'T involve dumb comedy or violence, I would be so fascinated to see what someone like Chris Jericho could do in a tense drama.

Selena, playing the SUBTLETY NAMED Faith talks with some of her group about going to Florida for spring break with her friends Brit, Candy, and Cotty. They warn her Brit and Candy are “crazy and evil”, but Faith dismisses this because she's known them since kindergarten.  Speaking of Brit, we join her at a frat party winning big at a dice game that amazingly doesn't get robbed. She's played by Ashley Benson, an actress I'm not familiar with but looking at her filmography she plays a cheerleader a lot. And I do mean A LOT.  The next morning Faith is awoken by her trio of friends so they can... frolic around the hallways in their underwear while the camera slowly pans over their bodies. This is going to be one long creepy and voyeuristic feeling movie. A big thank you to Harmony Korine for making me feel like Charlie Sheen on any given night.

The young women count up their money, finding they are woefully short to afford their spring break trip. Vanessa Hudgens, playing Candy, half-heartedly listens while she pretends her fingers are a gun and shoots at imaginary targets, something she's done several times already. I'm guessing she's going to be the really crazy one. The last of the group is Cotty, played by Harmony Korine's real life wife Rachel.  Faith rambles on about how boring life is as the camera man starts falling asleep, because the camera starts wildly shifting around and going in and out of focus. Oh no wait, that's just Korine being “avant garde”. Inspired by Faith's speech, the three hatch a plan to get more money. They snort some cocaine, which they can oddly afford despite being short of money for their vacation.

Based off the writer and director of this I was going to guess stripping, but no, they opt to steal a teacher's car, don some ski masks, and rob a diner. And to be totally fair, it is AMAZING. It's filmed in one long shot from the passenger's seat of Cotty's car, as she circles the diner while we see the other two inside robbing people with a gun and a hammer.  They get away and celebrate by torching the car. They take their ill-gotten money back to Faith, who wants to know where it all came from. When they tell her they stole it, she doesn't seem that phased and then proceeds to get high with them. This one scene pretty much told me everything I needed to know about this movie, as this isn't (shockingly) going to be big on character development.

The women head to Florida and the party is on! SPRING BREAK! WHOOOOO!!!!! Faith talking to her grandmother and talking about how much fun she's having via voice over sets up a LONG party montage/Skrillex music video and wow am I getting the Bling Ring flashbacks ALREADY. This segues into a live performance from internet famous rapper Riff Raff, who is playing a rapper named Alien- what? What do you mean that's not Riff Raff? Alright, Alien is played by James Franco and. He. Is. GLORIOUS! This is the role he was born to play, and I mean that as an absolute complement. A MILLION T and A scenes follow, including an incredibly disturbing one where Cotty gets drunk in a room full of horny scumbag guys. She tells them she's not going to have sex with them... then takes her bikini top off. I bet Harmony and Rachel Korine are an odd couple to hang out with.

The movie finally remembers it isn't a Girls Gone Wild video and advances the story by having the women get arrested at a coke party. The judge isn't going to charge them as no actual drugs were found on them, but they're getting citations and will have to pay the fines.  They have no money, but Riff- sorry, Alien ponies up the money for their fines and drives them away to party with his gangsta friends. Faith has a mini breakdown, as she just wants to go home now and is no longer having fun. She tries to talk her friends into leaving with her, but they choose to stay. Faith boards a bus and is out of the movie for good, as she has successfully avoided further temptation thanks to God letting her get arrested. Or something.

A lot of scenes of Alien and the three remaining women hanging out follow, and just like the Bling Ring, NOTHING is going on. However, James Franco is so captivating as Alien you don't even notice. I know the Academy would never even consider him for a role like this, but he is giving the performance of a lifetime here.  While at a strip club, Alien points out a man named Big Arch who is played by rapper Gucci Mane, and YES that is a real tattoo of an ice cream cone on his face.

Alien says they used to be friends but are now enemies, and warns them he is a bad bad man. They get into a verbal confrontation at the club, Alien standing his ground and you just KNOW that's going to come back to bite him. More nothing scenes of Alien and the three follow until we finally get to a scene where Alien plays Britney Spears' “Everytime” on the piano while the women sing and dance along. In pink ski masks and bikinis. While carrying assault rifles. If you've never seen all of Harmony Korine's movies before, you now officially have. Replace all the stars with nobodies and lower the production value by a few million dollars, and this is a summary of pretty much everything he's ever filmed: bizarre nonsensical scenes with weird imagery and out of place music for the sake of being weird.

This leads to the four robbing various people, all in slow motion while the beautiful Britney Spears song plays on. Props to a wedding robbery scene though, I'll be honest: this probably justifies the entire movie's miserable existence as we get to see Alien smash some guy's face into the cake in slow motion.  All of this action pisses off Big Arch, who declares Alien officially has overstepped his boundaries and “something needs to be done about it”.

He tracks Alien and his friends down, threatening that he's going to kill them soon. To prove his point he shoots Cotty in the arm and drives off. That pretty much ends Cotty's spring break fun, so she hops the next bus back to wherever the hell they came from, but not before taking the time for a quick shower so Harmony Korine can show us all how hot and naked his wife is. At this point, I wish to propose a law to Congress about banning men from filming movies starring their wives.
 

Very long setup scenes are next, as Alien, Brit, and Candy make their way to Arch's crib for revenge. These are some of the best looking scenes in the entire movie, as everything is dark except for the bright neon clothing the three wear.  As they walk down the boardwalk towards Arch's, one of his goons runs up and headshots Alien. Wow, that was anticlimatic. The women kill him, barely pausing to look at Alien's body as they continue walking on. A slow motion shootout ensues, narrated by Faith talking about how much fun they had at spring break. They shoot their way to Arch, killing him and driving off in his car. The last shot is a brief flashback of Brit and Candy returning to Alien's body and kissing him goodbye before they run away.

Cue the credits, set to Ellie Goulding's INSTANT modern day classic “Lights”.

Yikes, this was a tough one. This was a trashy and exploitative film that only existed to pack in as much T and A as possible without getting branded with the dreaded NC-17 rating. There is no plot to speak of whatsoever, no character development at all, hell there's not even that much dialogue during the long stretches of music videos.

And yet... I didn't hate this like I should have. James Franco is AMAZING here, and this really is his film over any of the other characters. The biggest complement I can give here is I totally forgot Alien WAS James Franco he loses himself so much in the role. Make no mistake though, if not for him working his ass off to inject... well, ANYTHING into this movie, this would have been WORSE than the Bling Ring. The Bling Ring, a movie I compared to Showgirls.  Psst... I'm doing the same for Spring Breakers! Ridiculous "attempts at satire", fetishes for neon lighting, exists only to push the T and A barrier... I really could go on forever how similar they are.

Naturally, critical opinion on this movie is VIOLENTLY divided. I've read reviews saying this was the best movie of 2013 with its subversions of youth culture and society's attitudes towards blah blah blah or how he used the colour palettes to convey depth and meaning by blah blah blah you know, the same kind of hipster bullshit that has made people like Harmony Korine a millionaire for making films featuring things like kids vomiting on Bibles.

The other side decries this as the worst movie of 2013 thanks to its rape culture imagery, overt sexism, and the way the cameras molest the bodies of every young woman on display.  I mean, I've read some PULITZER PRIZE QUALITY essays about this movie, writings people way smarter than me have obviously taken hours upon hours to painstakingly analyze and collect their thoughts over.

They're all VERY valid points, especially when you consider scenes like the voyeuristic one where the spring breakers are dancing in the hallway with the camera zooming between their legs, Rachel Korine's horrific interaction with the douchebag guys, or at the strip club when Alien is talking about Arch and the camera cuts directly to a stripper's breasts for no reason whatsoever. I've seen the film called racist as well, as the ending shootout features two white girls killing a mansion full of black people.

But I think both sides are COMPLETELY wasting their time and thoughts, giving this film WAY more insight than it deserves, as shock value through sex and racism is one of Korine's trademarks. He knows EXACTLY what he's doing, and is doing this just to push buttons and generate controversy, which of course gets his work talked about more and makes him more famous. He's been doing this since 1995's Kids, and people are still falling for it.

Another movie to avoid like the plague, although I would recommend looking up the wedding robbery scene on YouTube because it is awesome. Oh, if you could find a “Best of Alien” compilation on there, check that out as well.

On to the Dueling Movies Final Rundown:

1. What Did The Movies Look Like They Were About?

A group of over-privileged white girls committing crime sprees and looking as fashionable as possible while doing so.

2. What Were The Movies Actually About?

-The Bling Ring: nothing.

-Spring Breakers: nothing.

3. Which Movie Had The Better Protagonist?

Neither movie had any protagonists, they were just a bunch of irredeemable idiots who remorselessly committed crimes.

4. Which Movie Had The Better Love Interest?

Wow, I spent the past week working on two movies that had no characters.

5. Which Movie Had The Better Antagonist?

Uh... I guess TECHNICALLY Gucci Mane was the antagonist of Spring Breakers but geez, going off that logic half the cast could equally qualify as well. Bloody Hell... these movies were terrible!

6. Which Movie Had The Better Story?

Yeah okay, I'll play along. The Bling Ring was about a group of teenagers robbing people until they get caught by the police. Spring Breakers was about a group of girls robbing people until they get tired of it and drive away. I'm calling this one a draw.

7. Which Movie Wins?

There are no real winners here... but I hated Spring Breakers less so I guess it wins by default. Lord, what a week.