Former Disney princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens behave badly – very badly – in the very first trailer for Harmony Korine’s sure-to-be-controversial new film “Spring Breakers.”
“Pretend like it’s a video game,” one of the jailbait hotties urges as she and her friends prepare to rob a restaurant (with the noble goal of financing a trip to Florida). Intentional or not, it’s a timely bit of dialogue in this post-Newtown age.
The rest of the trailer indulges heartily in images of young women dancing in bikinis, young women shooting machine guns in bikinis, young women drinking and doing drugs in bikinis, and young women basically engaging in every other type of sordid activity you could possibly imagine (in bikinis).
Along for the ride is a cornrowed small-time criminal played by James Franco, who bails the girls out of jail in order to, you know, exploit them – an accusation many will almost certainly level at the filmmakers themselves.
If this hadn’t been written and directed by Harmony Korine (who scripted Larry Clark’s “Kids” before helming such envelope-pushing films as “Gummo” and “Trash Humpers”), all the flashy, titillating imagery on offer would’ve most likely been utilized in service of a sordid (and ultimately empty) cautionary tale, but underneath the Skrillex-led soundtrack and tanned nubile bodies on display I suspect the long-time provocateur has a whole lot more on his mind here.
My grade for the trailer: A+. After watching it, rate it for yourself at top left.
“Spring Breakers” hits theaters on March 22.