[7]

At first, Spring Breakers seems like a beautiful excuse for gratuitous boobage, but as it unfolds, I found myself more and more engaged with Harmony Korine’s (Gummo, Trash Humpers) story of four restless college girls who flirt with darkness and wrestle with the consequences. Darkness ultimately arrives in the form of James Franco, playing a silver-toothed rapper/drug dealer who bails the girls out of jail when the police raid a motel mega-party. The relationship between Franco’s character and the four girls is interesting, always teetering between sinister and sweet. No one is completely good or evil here. Even the church-going girl agrees to rob a restaurant, and Franco’s bad boy seems to come by his lot earnestly. Franco disappears into this role effortlessly — it’s a noteworthy performance in his speckled career. The girls are equally up to the task, and Korine executes the sordid content with gorgeous cinematography and inventive editing.