Spring Breakers (2012) *

     I was expecting “Spring Breakers” to be a trashy, hot mess of an exploitation flick, and that was going to be acceptable.  James Franco's performance as a drug dealer was supposedly worth seeing, and frankly I was curious how much clothing former Disney starlets Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez would remove. Even with those low expectations, however,“Spring Breakers” managed to disappoint me.

     The film is a mash-up of one of those Spring Break, Girls Gone Wild videos and an artsy, hand-held camera movie. Mingled with footage of gyrating, young women having cheap beer poured over their boobs is a story of four college girls who pull a robbery to get some cash, then head down to the beach for some spring break debauchery. The film is very poorly edited. The same scenes and conversations keep getting replayed, until you are just stunned at how boring a movie with this many naked breasts can be. I gave up after about 30 minutes, so I didn't even get to see James Franco other than a brief appearance on a stage as a rapper. I did read some reviews, and it turns out that Hudgens and Gomez keep their bikinis on throughout the film, in case you were interested.

     To me it's surprising how well-reviewed this film was. A 65% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.com is pretty good for a movie that feels like a self-indulgent, film-student project. The film does attempt to comment on the emptiness of hedonism, while at the same time exploiting it. I actually think there might be an interesting movie hidden in there, if only a decent editor had gotten hold of it. As it is, they made a red-blooded, American male turn off a movie about pretty girls in bikinis, which I guess is its own kind of artistic triumph.

1 star out of 5