And the casting is so spot-on, it's sick. Korine indulges in a number of stylistic flourishes, from the hand-held camerawork that sometimes looks like it was shot on an iPhone to the repetition of certain phrases in voiceover, to the self-conscious gimmick of transitioning nearly every scene with the sound of a gun going off, or a gun being cocked and loaded. When you're a filmmaker and you've got James Franco as a metal-grilled rapper-gangster singing a tender version of Britney Spears' "Everytime," accompanied on vocals by three nubile, mask-wearing nymphets on the verge of a crime spree, you've got something original swirling in your brain and you've effectively put it on the big screen. On other occasions, you feel as if you're experiencing raw, mad, avant-garde genius at work. When a pre-med student on spring break loses her top, drinks to the point of passing out and grabs a willing lugnut by the ears for six hours of anonymous fun, is she setting the woman's movement back 40 years, or taking charge of her life like any man would do at that age?Īt times, "Spring Breakers" feels as if the pervier cousin of Joe "Girls Gone Wild!" Francis filmed it. There are moments when you feel as if someone's going to tap you on the shoulder and say, "What are YOU looking at?" I think that's sort of the point. Korine's camera is nearly an intrusive weapon as he lingers over the soft, limber bodies of Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and his wife, Rachel Korine, as four lifelong friends who spend at least as much time caressing one another as they do in search of male companionship. The always-polarizing Harmony Korine (" Kids," "Gummo," "Trash Humpers") films "Spring Breakers" as if seen through the hazy, hyped-up viewpoint of the 21-year-olds (and younger) who flock to Florida every April, leaving the pressures of campus life behind and reveling in hedonistic rituals involving heavy doses of public nudity, sexual humiliation, anonymous hookups and copious amounts of over-imbibing.