Kids breaking out and cutting loose

Four bored college students take great risks to have the time of their lives on spring break.

Pimpin': James Franco in Spring Breakers. Source: Supplied

I CAN get an accurate review of Spring Breakers down to just three letters: EPN. Or if you prefer, three words: Every. Parent's. Nightmare.

Yep, this downright unsettling mood piece about four teenage girls cutting loose on America's notorious equivalent of our own notorious Schoolies Week is here for one purpose only.

To melt the worried minds of every mum and dad within a 100km radius of any cinema screening it.

Those who dare view Spring Breakers on its own malevolent merits will have to grudgingly admit this annoying, anarchic and aggressively amoral movie realises its grotty goal rather successfully.

What's the point, you might quite rightly ask?

There is no point. Which is a point in itself.

Come on now, how can anyone explain, let alone justify, the spring break phenomenon?

All over the globe, the teens of the 21st century are migrating in packs to any coastal destination brave enough to host them. They then commemorate the end of an educational year by wiping themselves out in a tsunami of sex, drugs, booze and sundry bad decisions.

Most live to tell the tale. Some never get over it.

In its rare moments of complete clarity, Spring Breakers captures this hedonistic vision of heaven, hell and hangovers for high-schoolers with irksome precision.

At other moments, the movie disappears inside a shambolic heat shimmer, where it is mighty hard to make out who is saying, or doing, what. The stunt casting of dethroned Disney pop princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens - playing half of a quartet of bad girls not above turning to crime to pay their holiday-way - adds considerably to the damaged-goods vibe at work here.

Bonus viewing points are also on offer to anyone who can peer past the cornrows, mouth-grill and bad complexion to recognise James Franco from the get-go.

He plays a pimped-out, predatorial purveyor of prohibited substances that takes an unhealthy interest in the young ladies' welfare.

A bizarre and uneasy movie experience that ultimately equates to little more than a woozy shrug. As if to say, "yeah, it's all too much". But hey, it's all too late.

> Spring Breakers [R18+]
Director: Harmony Korine (Gummo)
Starring: Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, James Franco, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine.
Rating: 2.5/5

"Youth? You can't handle the youth."

View the original article here