TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

ComedyFan2010 Somehow I missed out on this movie when it came out and didn't even know it existed until I now randomly found it. This is even surprising since Jason Segel is in it. But I am glad it happened because now many years after the college comedies were a big thing I got to enjoy one as a new. And maybe I liked it more now than I would have back then because it seemed so different unlike it probably was then when it was just one movie of many similar ones.I must say I have laughed through most of it. The story is simple and pretty fun. The cast is great. For many this movie was in the beginning of their careers and we can see now how far they went from it.Jason Schwartzman was absolutely perfect as Cool Ethan. He is a geeky psychopath and we are glad he didn't get the girl at the end but at the same he is a total pleasure to watch. Everything he does makes me laugh. He really stole the show.I felt bad for Laura Prepon who was in this movie for no reason whatsoever, played a very boring character (masturbating on the couch didn't help) and was pretty useless for the story. But other than that I loved it and would watch again.

Matthew McNaughton Poop jokes, fart jokes, masturbation jokes: this movie's got them all. A love story that's as bad as Jason Schwartzman's eyebrows, and a plot which moves as fast as carousel. How could anybody enjoy this movie? At one point Schwartzman gives a sponge bath to a topless old lady, and it's supposed to be funny. A guy has a sing-along session with his penis, I mean what the eff? Was this movie meant for perverted five-year-olds who go sneaking into 'R' movies? *sigh* You know, if they had dropped all the immature bullish, moved the beginning cheat scene to the middle, and make more sense of the whole Schwartzman character, this would be tolerable. But this makes me want to throw up.

Phantasm01 The story is almost painfully familiar. Jason Schwartzman is a disturbed college student with a massive crush on the sweetly attractive James King. In order to trick her into not only noticing him but eventually going out with him, Schwartzman blackmails three cocky cheaters into helping him con her into giving him her affections. Unfortunately, the head cheater is played by Devon Sawa who, while not being half the actor that Schwartzman is, is much better looking and as such, King immediately falls for him and he falls for her and the rest of the movie deals with how to deal with Schwartzman. As said, none of the movie's particular plot points are extremely clever and a lot of the humor falls flat. Particularly annoying is the director's need to pad out the film with the same boring fantasy sequences that seem to pop up in all stoner youth comedies nowadays. Scored to kitschy pop standards from the early '70s (the type of stuff these slackers wouldn't be caught dead listening to in real life), these fantasy sequences are filled with unoriginal takeoffs on better films and tend to stop the action dead -- not good for a film that feels overlong to begin with.Still, for every dead spot, there's a bizarrely inspired joke or a skillful performance that'll pop up unexpectedly and these good moments are so inspired and provide such a strong pay-off that the viewer is almost left feeling as if he's being rewarded for managing to make it through the bad moments. It's as if the director is saying, "Sorry about making that 20th joke about flatulence, here's a little Jason Schwartzman to help ease the pain." Certainly, Schwartzman is the film's main strength. Playing yet another eccentric, overly intelligent stalker-type, Schwartzman creates a character that is 180 degrees the opposite of his starring turn in Rushmore. He brings a manic intensity to his creepy role that is fascinating to watch -- both because of the skill of his performance and because of the fact that this is a rare actor who is willing to push against all self-imposed limits while on screen. The audience finds themselves tolerating a lot of uninspired bits just for the chance to find out what Schwartzman's going to do next. Schwartzman pulls off a minor miracle, giving a perfect comedic performance as a character who, when you actually get to the heart of the matter, isn't all that funny. However, Schwartzman is not the sole redemption to be found in this film's cast as James King, while stuck playing a symbol (the "good girl"), still manages to be very sweet and adorable (in the best sense of the term) as the unwitting object of Schwartzman's affections. For this film to work, you have to be willing to buy that so many people would be willing to make idiots out of themselves to win the heart of one, individual woman and luckily, King manages to embody that woman, much in the same way that Cameron Diaz helped to lend some credibility to the far superior There's Something About Mary. As for the star of the film, Devon Sawa doesn't get to display the flair of wild comedy that distinguished his work in Idle Hands (truly the only role to give him a chance to definitely distinguish himself from the current crop of 20-something pretty boys wondering around Hollywood) but he's still a likable enough protagonist. If he doesn't get a chance to be as interesting as Schwartzman, he also doesn't allow this film to turn into Freddie Prinze, Jr. vehicule either. And while most of the direction is rather uninspired, there are still a few moments of inspired lunacy that'll either annoy you or leave you in hysterics depending on your taste in humor. (A bit with a singing gym sock is probably the best example of this.) These bits of inspired lunacy are too few and too far between to make up for the fact that this is -- overall -- a rather uneven mess of a film but, for what their worth, they're there and they certainly make the film a bit more interesting than most of the shlock being churned out nowadays.Slackers isn't a great film. It's probably not even a good film. But it is a film with some great strengths to go along with its far too numerous flaws. If you're in the mood for this type of film, there are definitely worse ways to lose 90 minutes of your life.

ragreen259 I found it had some good moments, but I don't find humor in someone so mentally disturbed that he's stalking some naive college girl and masturbating in her dorm room while she sleeps. This guy is purely sick, and the fact is this guy would probably be locked in a mental ward in the jail section of a hospital immediately, if some of his fellow students didn't hunt him down and kill him. Ethan supplies no humor to the movie whatsoever, but does supply a certain warm fuzzy to the audience whenever someone kicks him in the nuts. It's a standard gimmick to put someone in the cast that's a dick, but this guy is a dick in the same vein that Charles Manson is a dick.Other than that, however, if they could've made that particular character not be a psychotic stalker jerking off in this chicks room while she's laying there asleep, and just kind of a dumbass instead, I think the movie would have been a little better accepted by the general public. Cute story, good music, decent cast--it's just that trying to extract humor for a sexual predator doesn't cut it.