James Franco’s Lil Wayne Look Debuts At Venice Film Festival

Disney princesses boozing up, guns, scantily clad women, and a serenade to a Britney Spears song. That’s just some of the visual imagery in Harmony Korine’s film Spring Breakers, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival on September 5.

The cast, which includes tween sensations Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Selena Gomez gallivant through their spring break experience, drinking and participating in sexual acts that seem more “Jersey Shore” and less High School Musical. Following the screening at Venice, the reviews are trickling in, and most are saying it’s James Franco’s performance as a rapping, drug dealing, bad boy that steals the whole show from the image conscious starlets.

The Playlist notes in a review:

“It’s Franco’s film. He doesn’t appear in any substance until nearly halfway through, but his Florida Fagin is enormously entertaining. Buried under corn-rows and metal teeth, Franco plays Alien like Matthew McConaughey doing an impression of Lil ‘Jon.”

The character of Alien may just describe the film perfectly as he is often seen boasting in his scenes, “Bikinis and big booties, y’all. That’s what life is about.” Another comical turn for Franco’s Alien character sees the actor crooning to Britney Spears’ lamentable ballad “Everytime” as the girls are seen in a robbery sequence. The song is rumored to be about Spears’ ex Justin Timberlake and their ultimate end. It is just the kind of juxtaposition that fans of Harmony Korine are used to, even though Spring Breakers is taking more of a narrative approach than past indie hits like Kids and Gummo.

Of working on the shoot, Franco said during the press conference:

“It wasn’t hard at all. I came on halfway through the shoot and they had already been shooting for at least a few weeks. I think Harmony just did an amazing job with casting. When I got there everybody was so into it. I think we all just were waiting for a movie like this to be a part of. It was effortless.”

James Franco makes his Alien debut in the following clip: