Spring Breakers

Spring Breakers is the result of a photographer for Maxim shooting a Point Break remake. Spring Breakers thinks it has something to say, but it confuses volume for content. It is not loud and empty like an infant getting an immunization; it is loud and empty like any talking head on any news network that's all opinion-based shows. It is a constant barrage of music and loops of dialogue that say words but say nothing. When the movie has to slow down to actually attempt character progression or an emotional display, you can feel the movie getting uneasy like an ADHD kid trying to sit still, That is, when it isn't pelting the viewer with an aural assault like MTV's The Grind @ Spring Break. The first 3-4 minutes of this movie are basically a dubstep music video, and it isn't the only one. The movie could probably be 15 minutes shorter if all the music montages and music video sequences were removed. Spring Breakers thinks it is being sexy because it has an endless supply of nameless (and sometimes faceless) topless extras, and former Disney Channel actors in bikinis. However, it is not sexy like your lover whispering seductive words in your ear and making come-hither eyes; it is sexy like a mannequin in the display window at Victoria's Secret. It is a reminder that sexiness is a quality human beings can possess, and that is as far as it goes. Spring Breakers shoots its desire to trade on sex with cannon blasts of sexual content at the viewer that is utterly devoid of actual interest. Any allure to be had, either from the carpet-bombing of naked anonymous breasts or of seeing former child stars in bikinis, is nullified by the sheer volume of it. It mistakes the mere presence of breasts to be sexy in and of themselves, and not the person or personality attached to them. Spring Breakers has a fragmented visual language, which is not uncommon in movies. However, it is not fragmented in the way non-linear movies like Dunkirk or 12 Monkeys are; it is fragmented in the way of editing any random 30 seconds into 2 second chunks, putting them in bingo balls, and re-assembling them at random. Spring Breakers looked at the way Natural Born Killers was filmed, thought "too calm", took a handful of trucker speed, and went to town. There is no reason for dialogue to loop and repeat, to flash backwards and forwards at random, to cut to B-roll in the middle of a scene, or to hear dialogue spoken but not see the conversation. Like the auditory side of this movie, Spring Breakers is visually noisy, but it is done to mask Spring Breakers' vacuum of space-level lack of substance. Spring Breakers wants to draw in the viewer with a peek at youthful hedonism run amok. It is not hedonistic like a party at the Playboy Mansion; it is hedonistic like being 42 and staying in bed looking at Instagram until 2 in the afternoon. Spring Breakers misunderstands the shock value of hedonism is in seeing the corruptive power of it. Trainspotting's deep dive into the world of heroin addiction, Kids' harsh examination of the sex lives of teenagers, or Helter Skelter's study of how having the power to indulge every fantasy leads to a bottomless well of disappointment, are all examples of how to examine hedonism in a movie. Hedonism is only as interesting a subject as the consequences of it; the downward spiral of drug addiction, life-changing (or even life-ending) STD's, legal consequences. Spring Breakers so afraid of the consequences of hedonism, it literally sends the one semi-moral member of the quartet packing the first time they're hit with a consequence. There is no growth, no change, no evolution seen from anybody in Spring Breakers when faced with consequences; they run out of the movie as fast the movie runs away from the subject. I will give Spring Breakers this: it never takes a side on the sexual politics at play. One could make the argument that the movie trivializes women and reduces them to objects, human sex toys that exist solely for the pleasure of men. On the other hand, all the events that happen in this movie do so through the choices of these four young women; they choose to get drunk and do coke, they choose to sleep around, they choose to walk around in bikinis, and so on. If they're making the choices, that's empowerment. Somehow, amazingly, Spring Breakers threads this needle and lets the viewer decide. Ultimately, though, that one positive is not worth the rest of the movie. Spring Breakers is not as transgressive as it wishes it were. It has nothing to say, and it screams that nothing at the top of its lungs like a shrieking parrot. It thinks sexiness is strictly a visual aspect, and will remind you every four seconds, even after you've long stopped being interested (if you ever were). I wanted to see Spring Breakers because I was curious, after hearing of the controversy about it when it came out, if it would live up to the reputation. I was prepared for one of two outcomes with Spring Breakers when I put it on: to either be offended by its wanton indulgence and hedonism, or to find it actually a sneakily subtle commentary on the topics. I was not prepared for a third possibility: to be bored out of my skull.