Directed by Harmony Korine. Starring James Franco, Gucci Mane, and Selena Gomez. Rated 18A.

Is there such a thing as a moralizing pornographer? Why would an “artist” throw licentious images at you only to arouse your sense of shame? And all in a flick called Spring Breakers?

The title is a cute come-on for writer-director Harmony Korine, who’s been pulling these kinds of transgressive tricks ever since he scripted Larry Clark’s Kids almost two decades ago. He turned 40 recently but is still fixated on bad adolescent behaviour, now in a more commercially palatable version of the nastiness he dished out in Gummo, Mister Lonely, and Trash Humpers.

In this Bizarro world simulation of a teen sex comedy, former Disneyette Selena Gomez plays the subtly named Faith, a Bible-thumping good girl attending an unnamed community college. (The film was shot in Florida.) She inexplicably falls back in with some childhood pals, three interchangeable bottle blonds played by fellow Mousketeer Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine (the director’s wife).

Lacking the cash for their next spring break, the surprisingly violent trio robs a local diner, which bothers Faith but not quite enough to keep her away from the beach at St. Petersburg. Between the beer bongs, topless girl-on-girl action, and booty-shaking, it’s enough to send a gal scurrying back to Jesus camp. But Faith doesn’t vamoose until the coeds hook up with Alien, a metal-mouthed rapper-gangster played Oztentatiously by James Franco, and get caught in a turf war lifted out of a hundred bad movies.

What makes this one so bleak is not the scolding but the repetition. Korine uses the same slo-mo footage over and over, and likewise turns the actors’ dullest lines into laughable mantras running throughout the clubby soundtrack. Alien’s catch phrase is “Look at my shit!” Turns out he means that literally.