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Slacker Movie Review

Slacker is a 1990 independent comedy drama film directed by Richard Linklater. It’s an okay debut for the director, but it’s far from a good movie.

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“Sorry, I’m late.

That’s okay, time doesn’t exist“

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The film about nothing, Slacker is set in Austin, Texas and it follows a bunch of titular slackers who do nothing all day but philosophize about life and everything in between. Personally, I really related to these characters. They are the extreme version of me for sure, but still I also hate working and I like to have countless discussions about anything really all day long.

But even though I definitely found myself in all of these people, I still did not care for this film. Yes, some of the discussions that they shared naturally appealed to me as they are per usual for Linklater fascinating and even thought-provoking. The one with The Smurfs is particularly memorable. However, the movie doesn’t connect any of these conversations into anything more meaningful.

Slacker is the kind of movie that is very much just a debut feature, and by that I mean a film that represents everything that Linklater is going to become famous for – long, smart conversations, quirky characters, strongly woven settings into a narrative – but the strong connective tissue and good technical aspects are utterly lacking in this instance.

Yes, Slacker looks very cheap, so cheap in fact that it becomes a distraction. The cinematography is bad, the directing is coasting, the performances are only passable and the movie simply never looks or sounds professional enough, even for an indie feature. That cheapness personally bothered me way too much to consider the film good at any capacity.

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I definitely found some discussions not only good, but excellent even. The film touches upon many interesting world issues and ideas, and simply the idea of these people having so many interesting, great ideas and never fulfilling any of them was relatable to me as I myself feel that all the time. However, that still did not lead to a good movie as all of those characters appear for only a fraction of time so we as the audience cannot come to care for them in the slightest. It’s an interesting approach, but not that great of an execution.

Slacker includes everything that Linklater is going to become famous for – long, clever conversations, quirky characters, strongly woven settings into a narrative – but the movie itself is a weak debut that doesn’t have a good connective tissue, the characters are only there for the fraction of time, thus becoming forgettable, and the technical aspects are cheap. I related to its characters and some ideas for sure, but I still found the film only passable and disappointing.