It’s actually kinda weird that I’ve never seen Spring Breakers before. I was 100 per cent one of the many victims of Pretty Little Liars, so you’d think the inclusion of Ashley Benson would have drawn me in.
I also had a room mate in University who talked about this movie non-stop for about a year… and I still never watched it. It could be because I have an extreme allergy to the personality vacuum that is Vanessa Hudgens, but anyway…
This film is nuts. That’s it. That’s the review. But I’ll expand anyway.
Spring Breakers is not particularly realistic, it’s not structured very well, the characters aren’t likeable… But it’s still an okay movie, and here’s why.
Firstly, this was a little blast from the past. As I hinted at before, Spring Breakers came out in my second year of uni. Everything down to the music choices (Skrillex, Britney Spears, Nelly) collated into one big ball of nostalgia for me, and it’s always nice to re-visit your past for a little while so that you can leave what a mess you were back then behind once more.
The casting choices were also quite brilliant. Using these young actresses who had ”good girl” personas back in the day (Benson, Hudgens, Selena Gomez) was a great choice because it lets you see them let their hair down for once. Obviously I’m not saying that the real-life actors were parallels of their fictional counterparts, but it was cool to see them not giving a shit and transforming into young women in front of our eyes.
Also, it made me really happy to see a movie about women doing shit that we’ve seen guys do on cameras for years. They gallivant around their town, shooting up corner shops, drinking heavily, partying like arseholes, commiting violent crimes… Everything that is generally only seen on TV when it involves men. (Think The Sopranos but with more teen drama and less manicotti).
Unfortunately this movie contained James Franco, who I literally cannot stand in any capacity unless it’s on Freaks and Geeks. The idea that his character in this is exactly Post Malone is hilarious, even though Post Malone was probably not known at all in 2012. Either way, as lame as he is, he’s quite believable as the dickhead character.
Another downside is that I have no idea the plot was, or what the hell the point was. It’s an entertaining enough movie, but it was really all over the place. Thankfully though, its run-time was exactly right at 96 minutes. Any longer and it would have bumped my rating down from ‘average’ to ‘poor’.
Spring Breakers is available on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
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