They say that funny men always want to play dramatic. They also argue that the serious actor always longs to be the buffoon. Stretching the sentiment out even further, leading men always long to break free of the handsome hunk mode and play down and dirty. Similarly, the heavy hopes for the day when they can look at a script and not see their name associated with the diabolical, the destructive, and the dead. So in the professional pecking order of Hollywood, anyone with solid commercial clout confirms these feelings by fiddling with their well established big screen personas. A laugh getter turns tender, or terrifying while the strong silent type struggles to make an ass out of himself. It’s called avoiding the typecast. It also means some interesting names have translated their talent into a turn at being the bad guy.

It was already poised to be a love/hate kind of experience. After all, the director, Harmony Korine, has been responsible for some of the most controversial (Kids, Ken Park) and head scratching (Trash Humpers) efforts in the last 20 years. As a screenwriter, he guided Larry Clark’s softcore slices of burned out youth culture, while his own directing duties have championed the outcasts and the unusual. Now comes his chance to cinematically ‘deflower’ a few of the teen idol babes from the House of Mouse/Nick at Nite school of celebrity. Spring Breakers, his artistically arresting view of the annual college ritual of excessive hedonism has made little impact at the box office ($5 million in less than 1000 theaters), but it’s definitely stirring some (often silly) debate.

RKO released this brash, fast-talking road-trip-cum-romantic-comedy the year after It Happened One Night, and while this forgotten picture certainly doesn’t match its famous model, it’s not shabby. Warner Archive has just released it through their on-demand service.

Like the song says, it’s different for girls. Coming of age means more than acquiescing to the roles constantly reinvented for you by society. It means dealing with those dreaded “S’s”—self-esteem, sense of purpose… oh, and of course, sex. Boys get the “will be boys” excuse while the female adolescent must balance her place in biology with her own raging hormones. So when they lose a major part of their growing identity—read: their father—and must face the notion of maturing without his nurturing machismo, it’s no wonder a gal goes a bit… daft. For India Stoker, the stakes are even higher. Something else is developing inside her, something guaranteed to give her aimless mother (Nicole Kidman) and sleazy uncle (Matthew Goode) more than a few fits.

Alternative title: Earth Girls Are Easy

POSITIVES:

A camp-filled fun fest.

Good pace throughout; hefty 85-minute runtime rarely flags.

Exposition-filled beginning and good surprise at the end.

Surprisingly high body count.

Alien monster thing is a lobster. No shit, a lobster.