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.
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Reviews
Don't Believe the Hype
Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
A Major Disappointment
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
I bought this movie decades ago when it came out on tape! I cannot tell you why I love this movie. Because I don't know why. Why I never included it in my list I don't know."Slacker" is my go-to-movie when I'm overwhelmed with life or just in a funky mood. So I watch this film and it's like good medicine. It makes me feel good, feel better. It's as if Richard Linklater made this for me. I want to be in the world he created for that 24hrs in Austin.I realize some people cannot tune into what's happening in Slacker but the movie makes sense to me.
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.
Richard Linklater creates an indie of a day in Austin, Texas. The camera follows one character leading to another in a series of portrait of misfits and disenfranchised. Linklater uses long uncut takes of these people talking usually in a monologue. The series of eccentric discussions and weird characters are a mesmerizing tapestry. Individually interesting, they are string together until it creates a picture of a subculture and a neighborhood. It's not a narrative and it's very random. I do have some problems especially with the lady getting run over and nobody seeming to care. It makes the people look heartless which I hope isn't Linklater's intent. Otherwise it's an interesting unique indie.
I enjoyed watching this film ~ as if it were a rougher form of Waking Life, but still intriguing. It's almost a mix between Waking Life and reality TV... in that you are opened in a series of snippets of various individuals lives as they walk down the streets of this all American town in the 90s.I would have loved to see a plot tie in more. Perhaps, looping back around to old characters and seeing how they were all interconnected, or what they were up to later in the day. But it's clear that wasn't Linklater's vision and that's OK. As it stands, some of the clips are not that interesting, or persist on too long. Some are very similar in concept to Waking Life, and if you were only going to see one of the two, Waking Life would be my definite recommendation.All in all, it was an interesting experiment.