(2013. dir: Harmony Korine) I know we're supposed to assume there's a metric ton of ironic humor here, but that doesn't mean you're going to laugh.
Questions of morality aside, can we all agree there's something creepy about a guy whose life-work involves surrounding himself with kids and convincing them to strip off and party for the camera? The Message of the Film seems to be that "Spring Break Forever, Bitches" is an ultimately unsatisfying motto by which to live. Korine uses it as a rough equivalent for (and therefore a condemnation of) the American Dream, but mostly he just wants to show us two hours of an unrated version of MTV's Spring Break. And it all feels (creepily) like just an excuse for him to exist at the epicenter of a big, naked party.
The movie starts out as a sort of girl-bonding thing, while the four chicas are getting pumped up to go to Florida, and terrorising diners in a local greasy spoon to get the money for it, but once Franco steps onboard, he hijacks the project. In a good way, I mean, because he's a good actor. The downside is that he's one of maybe two in the cast who can improvise effectively for longer than five words at a time, and the bulk of the film is improvised. The result is a lot of deadly dull dialogue, and Korine repeats this dialogue (his sound design is like a party dub remix, get it? It's Spring Break, y'all!) over the tops of subsequent scenes, sometimes several times and for no good reason, dialogue which was, and let me repeat this for emphasis, truly dull the first time around. Apparently some of these actresses were once innocent kid-actors: hence, irony. I didn't recognize them, so I don't know about that, but that's an outmoded trick. Remember Lisa Bonet? She was a Cosby kid until Angel Heart. Miley Cyrus, anyone? Justin Timberlake? Christina Aguilera? Most of the famous innocents veer wildly into the dark and dirty zone, because how else do you grow up? It's the only way to wash away the pong of the mawkish goo.
The important point is that unless you're particularly interested in youthful hedonism, or want to jack off, "Girls Gone Wild" can be simultaneously boring and depressing. He's got an interesting visual sense, Korine (albeit annoyingly pastel. I get it: we're in Florida. Flamingos and Margaritaville and Miami Vice. It's still annoying), and his ASS is downright SAVED by whoever is editing the thing (Douglas Crise. Good work, dude. Without you, nobody would have paid this movie any mind at all), but it's all built up out of endless, mindless set-pieces: "OK, everyone get in the pool and fire off your guns." "OK, everyone do coke off this naked chick's torso," or my actual favorite: "OK, all the girls get into your bikinis and pink ski masks, bring out your baddest-assed weaponry and gather around the piano by the pool, where Franco is going to sing a Britney Spears song." But, mostly, it's "OK, everyone jump up and down and holler and pour beer over each other as salaciously as possible. It'll be so fucking awesome."
By the film's end, all the girls have decided, --ridiculously, in two cases,-- that "being a good person is the most important thing, mom," and they all want to forget the trail of spent weaponry and dead bodies and go home to the old pink-curtained bedroom with the teddy bears on the bed. What?! It's got to be ironic, because it can't be anything else, but it just reads as a clumsy way to finish a film he didn't know how to finish.
To those of us who are long in the tooth, youthful hedonism feels slightly embarrassing, maybe indicative of a lack of imagination. It is of course possible that this perspective makes it impossible for me to relax into the spirit of the thing, but what I come away with is this: a story that is not interesting, pallid dialogue, a too-obvious message, unfunny humor, and unengaging characters.
That said, my co-worker and I have been having a good time today randomly punctuating conversations with a soft and sinuous, "Spraaang Breeaaak!" like the ones that Franco gives.
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