I have never been so disappointed. The trailer was just so deceiving, for it made it look like a wild party movie, similar to Project X, but with two Disney protegés, one Pretty Little Liars star, and one other chick, all of whom were in bikinis as they danced around Florida. This movie was anything but that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVvn9T6bqls
Let me back up. When I first stumbled upon the trailer on my Facebook newsfeed, I was excited but also anxious to see these good girls go bad. My Tumblr dashboard was clogged with photos of the stars barely wearing any clothing. The day I came home from my spring break, I rushed to the movie theater with my friend to go see it. We ordered sodas and a small popcorn, upgraded to a medium for a dollar more, and headed into the theater.
What first struck me about this movie is the fact that Selena Gomez, contrary to popular belief, still ends up being a goody two-shoes. In her first scene, she is singing along with a circle of other youths as they praise Jesus. However, the three other girls are wild from the get-go. They are shown goofing off in their college class and at house parties. Their friendship with Selena is never explained, which bothered me.
From the trailer, I thought half the movie would be about the four girls devising a big plan to rob a fast-food restaurant to acquire enough money for their trip; however, the robbing scene lasted a good three and a half minutes, and then the girls were suddenly in Florida. Once in Florida, the four girls partied for about ten minutes tops. It looked like what I imagine spring break to look like but on steroids. There was a ridiculous amount of naked girls and drugs, which made this party scene uncomfortable to watch.
Then, the girls are suddenly handcuffed in their bikinis. You’ve definitely seen a photo of this on some social networking site because apparently it’s artsy? The four girls are thrown into a jail cell together. By this point in the movie, I’m beyond confused: Why are four friends in one cell together, and where are the jumpers?
The girls stand before a judge, still in their bikinis, and they are told their amount of bail. In the back of the courtroom is a blinged-out James Franco – sorry – “Alien,” as he chuckles and makes his grills visible for all to see. What was he doing there? I will never know. But he takes it upon himself to bail the girls out. Keep in mind, they have never met!
Alien brings them into his crowd, which isn’t the crowd they were partying with poolside; these are robbers and murderers. Selena, who was supposed to break out of her Disney character, cried, hopped on a bus, and left. That was the end of her role in the movie. Her friends let her go, and no one offers to go back with her. Great friends!
There was one moment where I had to just laugh out loud at how ridiculously bad this movie was, and it was when the three girls who were left stood around Alien as he played “Everytime” by Britney Spears (one of my all-time favorite songs) on a piano in his backyard. The girls were wearing matching pink bathing suits, sweatpants, and ski masks, holding guns half the size of their bodies. The girls began to dance in slow motion to his song, and suddenly the original Britney track takes over. At this point, we see the four of them robbing and abusing innocent people in slow motion. This scene was painful to watch and ruined this song for me.
I don’t want to spoil the rest of the movie for you if you are planning on testing out my critiquing skills, but I advice that you take my word for it. I will say that it gets progressively worse, if that’s even possible. Nothing in this movie makes sense. It is just a bunch of James Franco voice-overs of “Springggg breaaakk… Springgg breaaakkk… forever,” but spring break ends halfway through the movie. Clearly whoever wrote the script had never been on a spring break trip of his own, because this was the absolute worst depiction of spring break. I would have preferred to watch a slideshow of PI photos.