FILM REVIEWS: Spring Breakers

If you make shit intentionally, and you call it art, is it still shit? This is the question that director Harmony Korine asks with Spring Breakers, and unfortunately, the answer is yes. Challenging Only God Forgives for the best cinematography yet worst script of the year, this rote heap of manure is uninspired, unoriginal, and completely offensive to good taste and everything it stands for. To call this bikini-clad onslaught of decadence, filth, and disgusting imagery a movie in any sense of the word is an enormous insult to actual cinema. This thing, whatever it is, is clearly not a movie, as it lacks characters, a plot, a coherent story, and dialogue that a potty-mouthed second-grader couldn’t have written. It’s the anus of cinema.

Spring Breakers is the story of, and I shall put this bluntly, four dumb sluts who rob a redneck fast-food joint in order to pay for their retarded spring break. They then proceed to drive down to Florida for the three Bs of spring break: Bongs, beaches, and boobies. For those of you expecting some sort of scathing social commentary from the infamously subversive director of this atrocity, look elsewhere. It is nowhere near as deep or as blunt as it should be, and it ends up getting too enthralled with showing the audience the disgusting side of youth in America, while simultaneously forgetting to actually satirize it. The result is an enormous, pointless, and borderline unwatchable mess that qualifies as one of the worst movies of the year.

Spring Breakers stars Selena “Getaway Bitch” Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine, and Ashley Benson as the four constantly bikini-clad main characters, and co-stars James Franco as a rapper by the name of Alien who takes them under his wing. Franco has been praised for his performance in this film, and I can see why, as he clearly gives it his all. But he’s playing such a one-dimensional character (“LOOK AT ALL MY SHIT!”), it’s impossible to give a fuck about him, no matter how invested he is in the role. Meanwhile, the four girls are virtually interchangeable, each having the occasional breakdown but always getting better just in time for a little more insanity.

The begrudging exception is Gomez as Faith, who acts as the highly religious moral center of the film. She’s still a dumb slut, but it’s really not that hard to be the moral center of a movie with characters this detestable and one-dimensional. I was waiting for her to somehow guide the movie to a close, or at least provide a mildly relatable character for the audience to take an interest in, but no-- she went home halfway through the movie. And the audience is then left with nothing but James Franco and three idiots jackassing around Florida and shooting shit up.

The sole saving grace of this film is the cinematography, which blends mind-bending slow motion with technicolor neon lights to create an incredibly weird effect. Supposedly, the film was supposed to resemble an acid trip, and the director definitely succeeded on that front. But even when the camerawork is magnificent, which it often is, it’s still filming repetitive shit. Yes, Harmony Korine, we get it-- you like boobs. But showing them to us for ninety minutes isn’t really a movie. It’s softcore porn.

The dialogue, when it even shows up, is some of the worst ever written. “Spring break... spring break forever...” I don’t know who the sadist is who had James Franco say that line eight hundred times over the course of this shitfest, but he deserves a special place in hell. For ninety minutes that feel like ninety hours, this movie plods along contributing nothing to society, much like the knuckledraggers who made it. The damage this kind of movie wreaks on people’s minds is unforgivable. I’d say that it was a career-killer, but to be honest, none of the people in this thing really had a career to begin with. And rightly so.

Final Score for Spring Breakers: 2/10 stars. Even though it features an inexplicably committed performance by James Franco, this painful mess is impossible to recommend on any level to anyone. It’s not only bad, it’s aggressively bad-- so bad, in fact, that it makes the audience feel as though they’re missing some biting piece of social commentary that, if noticed, will make Spring Breakers instantly enjoyable. But that aspect of this film does not exist, and if it does, it will elude any viewer who hasn’t taken a bong rip in the past half-hour. It’s the anus of cinema.

FILM REVIEWS: This Is The End

Well, this is a pleasant surprise! It’s rare that an ensemble comedy with a cast like this works out, but This Is The End pulls it off and ascends to its place as one of the funniest movies of the year. With an original premise that involves comedic actors playing themselves (or parodies of themselves), it skewers Hollywood mentality, disaster movies, and horror films with equal glee. Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson all turn out for this movie, with cameos by Emma Watson, Michael Cera, Channing Tatum, Jason Segel, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. In short, it’s the raunchy comedy fan’s dream.

This Is The End stars Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel as... well... Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel. Jay is in LA for the week, so he stays with his buddy Seth-- and what follows is one of the most heartwarming and vindicating film sequences of all time. It doesn’t matter whether or not Seth Rogen is actually like his screen persona in real life, because when he plays ‘himself’ in this movie, he is every bit as funny, chill, and dudelike as one would expect him to be. Baruchel, who isn’t as well-known as Rogen, definitely holds his own against Rogen’s comedic gravitasse. And when Rogen suggests that they go to James Franco’s new house for a housewarming party... you know shit is gonna go down.

After a few hilarious cameos, including a coked-up Michael Cera, something really unexpected happens-- THE APOCALYPSE. Most of the party guests are sucked into a pit of hell, the Hollywood hills are lit on fire, and the air is filled with smog and noxious gas. Or maybe that last one was just a regular day in LA; I couldn’t tell. Anyway, the last people left are Rogen, Baruchel, Franco, Hill, and Robinson-- plus Danny McBride, who turns out to have crashed the party. As cabin fever sets in, the movie becomes more and more hilarious, possibly more so for the actors themselves than the audience. Sometimes, the movie feels like an excuse for six friends to spend a few weeks dicking around in James Franco’s house for a sleepover. Whatever the intent, though... it’s still fucking funny.

I find it interesting that the two funniest movies of the year (this and Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing) also have two of the year’s simplest premises: Friends in real life having fun at someone’s house. But hey, go with what works, and this movie definitely works. Baruchel plays a bit of a dick, but he is eventually redeemed with the help of Rogen’s classic gruff-yet-lovable character. Jonah Hill parodies his ‘nicest guy in Hollywood’ reputation to perfection, and he ends up having some of the funniest lines in the movie-- plus an amazing sequence entitled THE EXORCISM OF JONAH HILL. Franco acts as the group’s leader, but mostly because he has a gun filled with blanks (oops, spoilers) and is probably the most accomplished actor of them all. And Robinson goes above and beyond by not just being the movie’s token black guy (although he is that), but the film’s moral center. Throw in jokes about demon penises and magazine porn, and you have one of the raunchiest-- yet funniest-- movies around.

But what really works in this (and really all of this group’s movies) is the undeniable heart that it has at its core. When the gang realizes that the Apocalypse is truly upon them, and they have to redeem themselves for their sins in order to be raptured up to heaven and escape the demons and cannibal hordes of Earth, they show their true selves. And it’s stunningly good. The relationship between Baruchel and Rogen makes the term ‘bromance’ cool again, and the touching final sequence (which I won’t spoil for anyone) should elicit some ‘awws’ from the audience. Of course, it’s immediately undercut by a Backstreet Boys reunion and Seth Rogen wishing for a segway, but that’s what makes this movie so good. It blends comedy with heart to seamless results. Perhaps not to the level that 50/50 did, but it’s still worth a little emotional investment. Raunchy comedies are rarely touching, but this one certainly comes close. Which is a pretty impressive feat on its own.

Final Score for This Is The End: 8/10 stars. It’s not deep, it’s not meaningful, but it definitely gets the point across: If the Apocalypse hits, it’s best to be with friends. Sure, it’s gross, and sometimes it will make you gag. But it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. This is a rare movie that leaves you wanting more, and the only flaw you can find in it is that it didn’t go on any longer. Plus, I wanted to see Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in it! But speaking of which, this movie is what The World’s End SHOULD have been. Simple, funny, and crude. It didn’t try to throw in any silly subplots, it didn’t attempt to be anything more than it was, and it used a straightforward premise to hilarious results. It’s too bad that we can’t get movies like this more often, but maybe Rogen and company will continue to pump out quality hits, because frankly, I could watch movies like this all day. It’ll have you in conniptions.