SLACKER (1991)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Richard Linklater / Teresa Taylor / Jerry Delony

Plot

The college town of Austin, Texas is inhabited by various losers, wannabes, eccentrics, artists, loafers, jokesters, and others strange personalities.

What I Liked

A documentary series I’ve been watching on Netflix called “The Story of Film” mentions a Latin American film from the 1950s or so (directed by Luis Bunuel, I think, but I can’t remember the name) where the camera follows various people on the street and, as the people pass each other, the camera switches from one set of people to another, following the new people in a conversation already in progress.  “Slacker” works in much the same way, its only discernible plot being the narrative’s trading off from one character to another, usually prompted by the first character somehow encountering the second.  In fact, the movie feels as though it’s been captured all in one take.  It hasn’t.  There are plenty of cuts, but the script flows so well we hardly notice them.  This allows for an seamless, yet unpredictable, journey through an otherwise boring, uneventful day in an otherwise boring, uneventful town.

Its the characters and their conversations that transcend the boredom.  Austin was apparently teaming with conspiracy theorists, wannabe artists, and the ilk in the early 1990s, at least that’s how writer/director Richard Linklater portrays it.  The accuracy with which Linklater captures the neuroticism, casualness, and boredom of a stunning number of peculiar individuals really makes the film entertaining, plot or no plot.  Surely anyone can watch this movie and find more than one character that is all too familiar.  Linklater’s characters are so pathetic and/or silly one can’t help but laugh, especially because they’re frighteningly real.  The movie’s cast does a great job delivering the ranting dialogue in a conversational manner that feels authentic, as though the film is a documentary and not scripted.

What I Didn’t Like

My interest in the movie began to wane once the novelty of the filmmaking approach began to wear off.  I found many of the characters in the latter half of the movie were nowhere near as funny or zany as those in the first half.  A little less than an hour in, I was checking to see how much time was left.  I still had another forty-some minutes to go.

Most Memorable Scene

Linklater himself plays the first of the “slackers” we encounter in the movie.  He takes a cab ride into town from the bus station and tortures the driver with some rambling pseudo-philosophizing about dreams and choices that is one part Sartre and lots of parts bad comic books.  The basic gist is that every decision represents multiple possibilities, which in turn are potential realities. Ironically, this soliloquy of sorts sets up the whole movie, not just in tone but in premise.   Better yet, the opening scene ends with the best line of the film five minutes in.  Though there are other high points, it’s generally all downhill from there.

My Rating: 3 out of 5