If you have a certain appreciation for the female body in either its natural or its slightly enhanced form;
if you also think that James Franco is a much better actor than he’s usually given credit for;
if you don’t mind a film jumping repetitively between various scenes and bits of dialogue to fill the time while said female bodies are on display (engaged in, for example, a romantic midnight skinny dipping session);
if you finally can bear the stupidity that seems to plague most American colleges and the students populating them …
… then you will not mind “Spring Breakers”.
It is certainly not easy to endure the mostly obnoxious and utterly immature ramblings of these teenage girls, but at least they are mostly clad in nothing but very Florida-appropriate bikinis at the most while talking nonsense. It would be a bit like a children’s version of “Wolf of Wall Street”, if the girls would not need to rob chicken diners so they are able to afford their orgies, and if not one of them was a confused and deluded fanatic catholic bible circle member.
But once they are on it, all is good, the booze and the coke and the hormone-plagued dudes in very embarrassing underwear are all in place, and the party can begin. Until they are arrested, of course, but the Deus Ex Machina is already waiting, jewelled teeth and all, ya’all! James Franco as Alien is terrific, and stories about his performance were the only reason I watched this in the first place. As a rapper and gangsta, he moves about his parallel universe in a frighteningly natural and confident way. He is bad, and tender, and clever, and witty, and ridiculous, and appropriately frightened of the things to come (not frightened enough, as it turns out). When you think you just can’t bear anymore the chatter of the less talented cast members about “oh I wish I could make time stand still”, he comes to save the day with a hilarious monologue about “look at all my shit, ya’all, that ain’t nothing!”, or with a blowjob on two guns – yes, two.
I read somewhere that this has material for cult classic, and I am inclined to agree. Imagining watching this at some 3 am screening after or during a night out, or maybe at home in the whirlpool in the company of these two ladies that made the last moments of the competing bad person more endurable… yes, there is a case for special interest cult classic, at least.
thomas4cinema 