"This is the fuckin' American dream. This is my fuckin' dream, y'all! All this sheeyit! Look at my sheeyit! I got... I got SHORTS! Every fuckin' color. I got designer T-shirts! I got gold bullets. Motherfuckin' VAM-pires. I got Scarface. On repeat. SCARFACE ON REPEAT. Constant, y'all! I got Escape! Calvin Klein Escape! Mix it up with Calvin Klein Be. Smell nice? I SMELL NICE! That ain't a fuckin' bed; that's a fuckin' art piece. My fuckin' spaceship! U.S.S. Enterprise on this shit. I go to different planets on this motherfucker! Me and my fuckin' Franklins here, we take off. TAKE OFF! Look at my shit. Look at my shit! I got my blue Kool-Aid. I got my fuckin' NUN-CHUCKS.…

Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is a neon haze of warped wish fulfillment and debauchery as four college girls live the modern American Dream during one long hedonistic nightmare known as spring break. The annual spring break has become something of a rites of passage for America’s youth, glamorised and immortalised by film and MTV. Korine’s latest, and arguably most accessible film in years, embraces the iconography of the yearly pilgrimage whilst lightly satirising the vapidity of American youth and their distorted values.

The film follows four college friends as they rob a Chicken Shack with water pistols in order to pay for their spring break trip to Florida. The BFF soak up sun, drink and drugs as the days and…

A beach party in the vein of Enter the Void. A mansion that glows pink like the neon letters in Drive. An hour and thirty minute party montage that oozes neon liquid and blares broken sound. A transcendent audiovisual trip into the depths of the American youth.

Its Spring Break.

Bitch.

Compulsive trash humper and arthouse demigod Harmony Korine has somehow created one of the most visually and viscerally intense films of this generation. Uh huh. The film about Disney stars in bikinis is one of the most abrasive and colorful trips in recent cinematic history. Yes, youre reading that right. Spring Breakers is in your face and gets deep under your sunburt crispy skin; an abusive and addicting picture…

I'll be honest. The first time I saw this I hated it immensely. But I was also oddly intrigued. When I watched this it was in a theatre during a sneak preview and after about fifteen minutes the first people started to walk out. After about half an hour, about half the audience had left. Those that remained were noisy, disinterested and annoyed, venting their frustration on the film.

In retrospect, this rubbed off on me and I guess I associated the experience with the film. But still those luring neon lights kept begging me to give it another watch. And when a mate of mine invited me to come over and watch what he called 'this generation's defining film',…

Despite my misgivings, it turns out Spring Breakers isn't some sneaky in-joke by Harmony Korine making fun of people dazzled by bright colors and wanting to have a good time. Well, it is, but it's less of a joke than an elegy; not a diatribe against Dionysian debauchery but instead a tragic story of the subversive co-opting of youth culture by commercialism and the effects it has on people snookered by it from the cradle to the (early) grave. Everything I assumed about Korine's M.O. throughout his oevre has been thrown into doubt thanks to the heart on display here.

Spring Breakers isn't really about 4 girls getting in over their heads. Sure, the girls are 'on display' (in all…