Spring Breakers

Given the mythic place of spring break beach party fantasies in youth culture, it seemed inevitable that some filmmaker would eventually serve up a mainstream film about beer-soaked, bouncing babes in-and-out-of-bikinis engaged in decadence and debauchery. Enter self-indulgent avant-garde director Harmony Korine (Gummo, Kids, and Trash Humpers), who is joined in this rowdy rebellion by defiant, former Disney Channel stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, along with Ashley Benson, and Korine's wife, Rachel. The seedy story revolves around four coeds who are eager to go to Florida for spring break but lack the cash. While church-going Faith (Gomez) prays, the other three—Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson) and Cotty (Korine)—armed with squirt guns and a sledgehammer (and hidden by ski masks) rob a roadside restaurant, hootin': “Pretend like it's a video game!” Fully funded, the girls take off for gyrating, sun-soaked fun in St. Petersburg. All too soon, however, their hallucinatory bacchanal of drinking, dancing, and drugging lands them in jail, where they're bailed out by Alien (James Franco), a sleazy, swaggering, heavily-tattooed gangsta rapper who transports them to his meth-funded mansion, home to madness and mayhem. Voyeuristic and hyper-sexualized, Spring Breakers offers a creepily calculated, cinematic commentary on the superficial emptiness of our youth-driven pop culture. Optional. (S. Granger)