Slacker
Slacker
R | 05 July 1991 (USA)
Slacker Trailers

Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.

Reviews
Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable
Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
saylub Slacker defies categorization. IMDb lists it as Drama and Comedy because they have to put it in a genre. The camera follows one person or group until someone leaves the group thus giving the story the cue to focus on another character that enters the screen. You could say it's a movie about nothing, like how Seinfeld is a show about nothing. It's about normal life, with some of the moments having the potential to be dramatic. These moments are not shot in a dramatic way, however. If Linklater had chosen to do that there would be more emphasis given to one character over another, which the movie is intent on not doing, maintaining a steady pace of moving from one person and situation to another. There is no conflict to be resolved, another reason it makes it hard to consider it a drama. So the movie is more focused on style rather than story. Once you realize that this movie is unconventional you can enjoy it for what it is and what it won't be. As for the comedy aspect, there are moments that I laughed. I couldn't tell whether the moments were meant to be funny, though, which made them even more funny. So it was like my first watching of Napoleon Dynamite, moments I laughed but wasn't sure if they were meant to be funny because it was so weird and unlike anything else I had ever seen. I was impressed with how well they did and how much money they made with the little budget they had. They used hardly anyone with acting experience and yet they were believably real characters. If you like indie or unconventional movies, watch Slacker.
paulccarroll3 Sometime soon after this film came out in 1991 Austin was overrun by High-tech Geeks,which lead to a housing and population boom that threatened to wipe old Austin off the map. That's when the slogan "Keep Austin Weird"began to be heard. Austin was truly strange, especially compared to the rest of Texas,which was mostly rural and conservative. Austin was a fairly small town centered around the University of Texas and the Texas government,located in Austin,since it's the state capital.In the late 1970's my Friend moved to Austin to go to UT. I helped him move,and would crash on his couch when I would visit him every other month or so,in his apartment that he shared just off campus. He was studying art design and through him I saw a lot of the art scene,music and bars and eating places. It all seemed so outrageous and bohemian. Like the people and places in Linklaters'film,everywhere we went there were interesting things going on,and people talking and musing on the new thoughts and ideas that they were running into in classes. Another aspect was the drugs and alcohol that was part of all these encounters.I had never seen so many young women who were obviously not wearing bras,and some were not shaving their legs and underarms. Amazing! These girls had mostly been nice Baptist girls just a few months ago,till they were freed,or corrupted,by laid back Austin. Frankly I think that by the time Linklater made this film,the real weirdness was long gone, with only a fringe of strangeness left.Still, it is fun to follow the stream-of-consciousness dialogue and remember the way Austin used to be,before you had to beg people to not be normal.
grantss Dull and pretentious movie. Pointless unrelated stories stitched together. One or two of the stories are mildly interesting. However, the rest are incredibly dull, consisting mostly of people talking either about weird but dull stuff, pretentious philosophical things, inane conspiracy theories or boring domestic stuff. I generally like character-driven dramas, but this was horrible. None of the characters are likable. In fact, they're all incredibly loathsome. Bit hard to feel engaged in the movie if you hate ALL the characters...Notable only for being Richard Linklater's second movie as director (and writer). Thankfully, he got better. A lot better. His next movie was Dazed and Confused...
Jackson Booth-Millard This was the directorial debut of Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise, School of Rock, Boyhood), I may have heard about it previously, but I was mostly attracted due to its placing in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically the film is a plot less day in the life of an ensemble of unrelated and almost unconnected twenty something characters, predominantly social outcasts and misfits, in Austin, Texas, the structure is unique but straight forward as each one is introduced. The various characters are seen in conversation for no more than a few minutes before moving on to the next one, but what all of them have in common is that that do not not fit into the norm of society. These include a highly talkative taxi passenger (Richard Linklater) who after a long chat almost to himself says "Should Have Stayed at Bus Station", a UFO enthusiast and buff who has a theory and insists that since the 1950's the United States have never been to the moon, and a character who has conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a man robbing an elderly man's house and the old anarchist owner makes friendly conversation with him, a serial collector of television sets, and a hippie woman (Teresa Taylor) who has a Madonna pap smear and is trying to sell it. You never find out the real names of these eccentric characters, but the main topics of conversation for most of them is why they seem to be excluded socially and politically marginalised, they talk about their class, their lack of jobs, media being controlled by the government, and just generally their conspiracy theories and philosophies. Also starring Rudy Basquez as Taxi Driver, Jean Caffeine as Roadkill, Jan Hockey as Jogger, Stephan Hockey as Running Late and Mark James as Hit-and-Run Son. This offbeat and low budget teen movie of sorts is a good start for a director like Linklater, it certainly gives you an idea of the sort of films he would later become popular for, it is pretty much just dialogue and odd characters, but that is why it is really interesting. Most of the conversations you listen to throughout do have some relevance, it might not be to the tastes of all who watch it, but overall I found it an enjoyable enough cult comedy. Good!