Spring Breakers - Blu-ray Review

'a disjointed and terrifying wet dream, conceived in a teenage sub-Tarantino mind that cares more about breasts and bikinis than plot and precision'

'Fever dream' is the now kind-of famous phrase used to describe Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine's trip through teen desire falling apart at the seams. The phrase and it's usage is all the more hilarious for its complete inaccuracy.

There's nothing 'dream'-like about Spring Breakers, either in terms of its plot, its feel or its technical ability. Describing it as a nightmare would probably be too similar to the dreamers, but at times that's what Spring Breakers feels like; a disjointed and terrifying wet dream, conceived in a teenage sub-Tarantino mind that cares more about breasts and bikinis than plot and precision. Often Korine's film is lecherous, more often it's broken, muddled and borderline infuriating. There's perhaps a stylish work here somewhere, hiding beneath every camera trick in the book and a plot that can't decide where it's going. Rarely does that stylish work break out.

Gunshot sounds to cover a sharp cut to the next scene, slow-motion whilst fast raves happen in the background, a character called Faith (Selena Gomez) with a deep religious background. None of this is as new as the inclusion of lurid neon shades and bouncing clubbers want you to believe it is. In fact, the vast majority is recycled into a confused framing that struggles to meld all of the elements together.

Initially it seems as though Faith, Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) are the film's focus, a group of college students on a mission of self-destruction that Korine wants to take to its end.

The director's real interest finally arrives after at least one act of wasted time, as James Franco's Alien, one of the creations of the year from an acting point of view, arrives to introduce drugs, guns and a lot more madness to the girl's quest for something below infamy. Franco - an easy figure to mock, especially when he appears tattooed, in braids as a white rapper - is a revelation, engaging, humour-filled and completely convincing. He's the best thing about Spring Breakers and the scene where he sings Britney Spears, though yet again something here that's from a completely different film, is in isolation, probably a highlight.

But Franco, essentially on his own, can't save a film with no idea, little script and a plot of the wafer variety. Korine, at best, wants to have his cake and eat it; this is a film with four female leads about young females breaking out, but it is also a film in which the director ogles each of them with stunning frequency and saves the best part for the male support. If it was easy to be convinced that this was what Korine was after then maybe there could be praise there of some sort for achieving his aim, but this is such a mess I'm not wholly convinced that even that was entirely on purpose. And accidental ogling is a crime indeed.

By Sam Turner. Sam is editor of Film Intel, and can usually be found behind a keyboard with a cup of tea. He likes entertaining films and dislikes the other kind. He's on Google+, Twitter and several places even he doesn't yet know about.