I was shocked when I heard that Harmony Korine was doing a spring break movie. And with name actors in the cast. James Franco even. I missed it at the theater, but I caught up with Spring Breakers the other night.

Harmony Korine's movies are not for everyone. Not many people get them, and many have no desire to get them. They are filled with the most unpleasant characters. His vision is usually of an ugly, unclean, nasty undercurrent of society. I understand that Mr. Lonely is different, but I have not seen that one. I have seen Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy.

Gummo is one of the most reviled movies of all time. I have rarely seen such hatred toward a motion picture. And, granted, Gummo is a sickening, disgusting movie. But to some of us with bizarre notions of wit, it is hilarious. Gummo is also visually arresting and endlessly fascinating. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.

Then there was Kids, which Korine wrote when he was 19. It's difficult to imagine a more horrifying story than this one. Critics embraced it as a cautionary tale, but I think Korine was merely writing about life as he knew it in the streets. Kids sickened me, but I admired it. I saw it back when it came out, and I told myself that I never needed to see it again. But I did the other night, after watching Spring Breakers.

It's an accident that I even own the Kids DVD. I would not have bought it. I was in Raleigh, NC, one evening, waiting for my ex wife to get off work. I was exploring some woods behind the motel I was at and I found an area where there was a fire pit and a bunch of logs and stones set around it. The place was deserted, but I knew it was a spot where kids came to party. There was a copy of the Kids DVD lying on the ground. I picked it up and kept it.

Anyway, back to Spring Breakers. I was surprised---happily so---that many critics had good things to say about the movie. Maybe Harmony had toned his excessive tendencies down.

Well, yeah. This certainly isn't Trash Humpers. Then again, it ain't Where the Boys Are either. It is, however, the most commercial movie Korine has made to date.

Spring Breakers is still pretty weird. If you like credibility and logic in a story, you might wish to look elsewhere. Spring Breakers is a like a dark fairy tale. Very dark.

A group of obnoxious college women are desperate to escape their dull daily existence and make it to Florida for spring break. They raise the money by robbing a restaurant with realistic squirt guns. They also bring along an innocent Christian girl played by Korine's wife, Rachel Korine).

The four young women hit the hedonistic beaches of Florida, and the partying is just about as repulsive as the morally valueless kids in Kids. Even in my hardest partying years I would be sickened by the gross antics of the students in Spring Breakers.

The girls are arrested, but are bailed out by a drug-dealing rapper named Alien. Alien is played by James Franco, in a very high point in his career. He is perfect in the role. I've liked Franco since seeing him as Desario in Freaks and Geeks, but he has outdone himself in Spring Breakers.

The movie turns into a bizarre romance as Alien and the girls grow closer. Two of the girls bail and (wisely) head home, while two stay with Alien until the bitter end.

The entire movie has a dreamlike feel to it. The gaudy excess, the casual violence, sex, the endless use of drugs and alcohol. The final moments of Spring Breakers are especially surreal. It's oddly touching in a repulsive way. But that's Harmony Korine. He brings these horrific situations and people to the screen, and somehow he makes them a twisted, nasty dignity.

I loved Spring Breakers, but as I said above, many will have the opposite reaction. The reviews at Redbox (where I rented the DVD) are almost all violently negative.

It makes me smile to see that the notorious Harmony Korine got this movie funded and into multiplexes. Spring Breakers is a success, of sorts, and I hope it paves the way for more high profile features for him.

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