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Parents' Guide to

Spring Breakers

By Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Former Disney starlets go bad in super-edgy crime comedy.

Movie R 2013 94 minutes
Spring Breakers Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 16+

Based on 20 parent reviews

age 3+

fun movie to teach about dangers of drugs and stuff like tha

"true be told i aint from this planet yal" - alien by james franko. cool movie 😎 thank you James Franko and Selina Gomez for this movie. director very intersting mayb check out his other movies? julian donkey boy

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models
2 people found this helpful.
age 18+

Only for adults!

This movie makes being "bad" look like a good thing. Anyone that cannot judge the difference between good and bad, with proper maturity, should not watch this movie. I could barely finish it without getting upset by the events in this movie!

This title has:

Too much violence

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (20 ):
Kids say (55 ):

This movie's likely to make audiences ridiculously uncomfortable with its realistically graphic scenes of adolescent sex and substance abuse. Director Harmony Korine (Kids) can't seem to help but push buttons and cross boundaries. For adult viewers, the movie's salacious close ups of bouncing breasts and gyrating bikini bottoms, the repetitive scenes, and the general plotlessness make sense, because Spring Breakers is ultimately poking fun at the misguided nature of the spring break party scene and the college kids who think this that a week of booze, booty, and getting high is what they're meant to experience -- and what they deserve.

But teens -- who may well be drawn to the movie by the idea of Disney starlets doing their version of "Girls Gone Wild" (Gomez less shockingly than Hudgens, who's startlingly sexual as wicked Candy) -- won't necessarily understand the cliches that Korine is skewering. They'll be too distracted with the nonstop titillation (no matter how uncomfortable it is) to see the film for what it is -- a subversive treatise on the naivete and downright idiocy of this out-of-control rite of passage. The young actresses hold their own, but it's Franco who chews up the scenery with his hilarious minor kingpin who loves to shout "Look at my s--t!" and sing "Spring break, spring break, spring break forever!" Adults able to deal with the movie's carnal excess will be able to see its clever messages, but if an audience just wants to see breasts and beer and coke-snorting, then they've proved Korine's point.

Movie Details

  • In theaters: March 15, 2013
  • On DVD or streaming: July 9, 2013
  • Cast: James Franco , Selena Gomez , Vanessa Hudgens
  • Director: Harmony Korine
  • Inclusion Information: Female actors, Latino actors
  • Studio: A24
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Run time: 94 minutes
  • MPAA rating: R
  • MPAA explanation: strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use and violence throughout
  • Last updated: April 2, 2023

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