Friday, March 15, 2013

'Spring Breakers' Reviews: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Spring Breakers Reviews

The reviews are in, and they are mixed! Some critics loved 'Spring Breakers', while others hated it and compared it to 'Girls Gone Wild.' Read them all here!

Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Vanessa Hudgens leave their morales at home and pack their bikinis for a wild vacation in Spring Breakers, and following the March 14 LA premiere the reviews are in! HollywoodLife.com loved the movie, but other sites are not so kind! The New York Post calls it a 'mock cautionary tale,' while the AP calls it 'boring', however Time Out New York says it is 'radical.' One thing is unanimous ' James Franco is a hit!

Reviews Of 'Spring Breakers'

The New York Post

'Yes, there are four young women (including erstwhile Disney stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens) cavorting in Day-Glo bikinis for almost the entire 92-minute running time of this mock cautionary tale. Which feels like practically forever in what's basically a 'Girls Gone Wild'' short artily padded out to feature-length by endlessly repeating the same scenes and lines of dialogue, often three or more times.'

The A.V. Club

'True to the Korine spirit of calculated scandal, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens molt the remainder of their squeaky-clean Disney image as two in a quartet of friends (Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine are the others) determined to head from Nowheresville, U.S.A., to Florida for spring break. Lacking the necessary funds, three of them cajole good girl Gomez into knocking off a diner with squirt guns and sledgehammers, and they hightail it down the freeway with their ill-gotten cash. Florida turns out to be every bit the end-of-the-world bacchanal they dreamed it would be, but the cops inevitably round them up and throw them in jail. They find a surprise benefactor in James Franco, a blinged-out gangsta who bails them out and proceeds to get them into deeper trouble.'

The Associated Press

'This is the rare movie that I actually found myself liking more the longer I spent away from it and the more I thought about it ' mainly because I couldn't stop thinking about it. In the moment, I found it numbingly repetitive, even boring at times: an obvious juxtaposition of sex and violence, of dreamlike aesthetics within a nightmare scenario. And it is all of those things. But it stuck with me, and it made me appreciate the genius of Korine's approach.' 

Salon
'As for James Franco, he very nearly makes up for his dull and uneasy leading role in 'Oz the Great and Powerful' with Alien (real name: Al, 'but I'm from another planet, y'all'), a thoroughly offensive and outrageous character who is so ridiculous he's almost believable. Reportedly based on a real-life Florida rapper named Dangeruss, Alien is like a human embodiment of everything that's toxic about American pop culture ' up to and including those silly shorts that are almost but not quite as long as pants ' and as such is also charming and irresistible. I'm not sure which of Franco's scenes is most disgusting and great: The one where the girls force him to fellate his own guns and he likes it, or the beachfront piano rendition of Britney Spears' 'Everytime,' complete with an interpretive dance number involving pink unicorn ski masks.'

Village Voice
' 'All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun' goes Jean-Luc Godard's quip. Add to that a few more girls and their bikinis and you have the rough formula for Harmony Korine's 'Spring Breakers,' which looks like the most expensive 'Girls Gone Wild' video ever made and feels like a grindhouse version of a 1950s beach-party movie: 'Where the Boys Are Pimps and Gangstas.' Or 'Gidget Goes to Hell.' As in the best work by Korine ' the agile agent provocateur whose credits include the screenplay for 'Kids' and, most recently, the shot-on-VHS vagabond vaudeville 'Trash Humpers' ' it is impossible to say where exploitation ends and deconstruction begins.'

Time Out New York
'It all plays out in a final flourish of DayGlo 'Scarface' wish fulfillment, and you can't really believe what you're watching. Alien ' and Korine ' tell us it's the American dream come true, and even if you resist going there with them, the have-your-cake-and-fling-it-too stupidity is breathtaking. It takes some kind of cracked artistry to put coeds in hot-pink ski masks and have them twirl around to a Britney Spears ballad toting machine guns. 'Spring Breakers' is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad ' and radical it is.'

But does it really matter what these people think? What did YOU think of the movie HollywoodLifers?

WATCH: 'Spring Breakers' Review: Selena Gomez Sheds Her Disney Image, And Her Clothes

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' Eleanore Hutch

More 'Spring Breakers' News:

  1. Selena Gomez: I Was Nervous To Take Risky 'Spring Breakers' Role
  2. Justin Bieber's Music Banned At 'Spring Breakers' After Party
  3. Selena Gomez Looks Radiant In Red For 'Spring Breakers' LA Premiere


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