Movie review: 'Spring Breakers' not your average teenage orgy

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Genre: Drama, Crime

Run Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes, Rated R

Starring: Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, James Franco

Written and Directed by Harmony Korine (Gummo, Mister Lonely,Trash Humpers, writer of Kids )

​Talk about a buzz-kill.  Spring Breakers (opening today) is getting tons of attention for the career u-turns of its three up-until-this-point wholesome actresses, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson. All three have found fame in kid-friendly fare on the Disney Channel (Gomez) to High School Musical (Hudgens) to Pretty Little Liars (Benson). Now, they join controversial writer/director Harmony Korine for an R-rated sex-crime fantasy meant to catapult them into the world of adult entertainment.

OK, not "adult entertainment," but rather, entertainment meant for adults.  Spring Breakers is definitely filled with sex, nudity, drug use, adult content and graphic violence, but it doesn't strike the tone that you may first think when you hear it's a "spring break" movie. It should not be confused for a teenage road-trip comedy. This movie is anything but funny.

Faith (Gomez), Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, the director's wife, who rounds out this group of friends) are horny high schoolers, who pass dirty notes to each other and are emotionally disconnected from their families and teachers. Faith zones out during her church group and we get the idea that these girls just can't wait to fly the coop. Not having the dough to go on Spring Break, they decide to rob a diner in their small town, steal a car and make their way down to St. Augustine, Florida without a care in the world.

When they find what they are looking for - boys, alcohol, drugs and music - they settle in for a wild ride. But when one thing leads to another they find themselves incarcerated. Enter "Alien" (James Franco), a corn-row wearin', blinged out drug-dealer who comes to their rescue and takes them in.

The style of the film makes the whole film feel more like an "experience" rather that an actual story. There is a lot of trippy imagery, flash-backs and jump cuts that almost make you feel like you are one of the dazed and confused Spring Breakers.

But don't believe the hype. This film takes its "innocent" cast of actresses and does very little with them. This movie's premise is more shocking than its actual content, unless you find it risque, for example, to see Selena Gomez take a bong hit, or see Vanessa Hudgens make out with both a guy and a girl in a pool (a sequence so heavily edited that very little is actually seen). In fact, that pool sequence is a metaphor for this entire film: Not much is actually revealed, dressed up and made pretty by the flashy editing style of the filmmaker.

Spring Breakers is not all that eye-opening after all, even though its outer coating may tell you otherwise. It's a hollow, empty film that relies way too heavily on trickery and shock-value. The entire draw of the movie is that it stars these innocent well-known actresses, wearing bikinis, swearing and getting drunk, but what actually happens in the movie makes you understand why Selena's mom and manager would sign off on her appearing in it: It's not Disney, but it is quite harmless.
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Spring Breakers does do a good job of capturing the teenage desire of living in the moment, where there are no such things as consequences. It has a very "F You" feel to it that many younger audience members may connect to. But just like the character of Alien, who surrounds himself with guns and drugs and proclaims to have "Scarface playing on a loop" on his flatscreen TV, it takes more than dressing up like one to be a real gangster.

And Spring Breakers is ultimately all show. It's a pointless, shallow movie wrapped in the hard-core dressings of a serious R-rated sex-crime fantasy. Spring Break has never felt so lame and dispirited.

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