Spring Breakers

Stars: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Ash Lendzion, Gucci Mane

Director: Harmony Korine

Pretty much a soft-porn movie devoted to the more voluptuous female form, masquerading as offbeat arthouse material. Punctuated by shots of hundreds of teens jumping up and down on Florida beaches, the early part of the story concerns four 16-year-old girls (Gomez, Hudgens, Benson, Rachel Korine) desperate to escape to the coast for spring break.

So desperate in fact that three of them hold up an eaterie to get the rest of the money they need.

Once in Florida, the girls plunge into a giddy world of drugs, sex and booze, together with scores of other 'breakers'. Arrested by police for underage imbibing in the aforementioned, the girls are bailed by a local gangster (an unrecognisable Franco with dreadlocked pigtails and a mouthful of fake gold teeth) who takes them under his wing and boards them at his apartment, which is stuffed with gems and money - so much that he doesn't know what to do with it all.

The religious Faith (Gomez) is miserable in this brooding environment and goes home, while a rival gangster shoots Cotty (Korine) in the arm; she too goes home, leaving the other two to take up an unlikely array of automatic weapons for a showdown.

Although this is all as prettily photographed as you'd expect from a Harmony Korine film, it's a project that rapidly runs out of ideas, not that it had that many in the first place, with some foolishly conceived sequences - and both dialogue and beach scenes repeated over and over. Take a break and miss it.

David Quinlan

USA 2012. UK Distributor: Vertigo. Colour by Cineworks.
94 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 3, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 3, Swearing 3.

Review date: 05 Apr 2013