Synopsis
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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Cast
- Richard LinklaterShould Have Stayed at Bus Station
- Rudy BasquezTaxi Driver
- Jean CaffeineRoadkill
- Jan HockeyJogger
- Stephan HockeyRunning Late
- Mark JamesHit-and-Run Son
- Samuel DietertGrocery Grabber of Death's Bounty
- Bob BoydOfficer Bozzio
- Terrence KirkOfficer Love
- Keith McCormackStreet Musician
Recommendations
- 91
Entertainment Weekly
The movie never loses its affectionate, shaggy-dog sense of America as a place in which people, by now, have almost too much freedom on their hands. - 88
Portland Oregonian
Richard Linklater's ingenious social comedy is a tour de force, at least in a minor way. [25 Oct. 1991, p.19] - 80
Washington Post
Linklater's control seems all but invisible here. But this kind of stylistic lucidity can only be the result of determined calculation and planning. The kind of happy accidents he captures don't come about by accident. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
The point is not really what is said, but the tone of voice, the word choices, the conversational strategies, the sense of life going on all the time, everywhere, all over town. - 75
Chicago Tribune
Linklater`s creation is delightfully daffy-far better, as one of the slackers puts it, than a sharp stick in the eye. - 75
Boston Globe
Despite a deceptively aimless surface that seems to take off from the initial character's musings on roads not taken, Slacker is more than a gallery of alienated post-collegiates spinning their wheels waiting for something to happen. [4 Oct. 1991, p.47] - 75
Miami Herald
Slacker is not always so purposefully creepy, but it's often as darkly funny; none of its characters is what you'd call normal, but the film's off-kilter view is such that they seem utterly in tune with their odd lives and odder times. [29 May 1992, p.5] - 75
San Francisco Chronicle
If they weren't so funny and real, and if Linklater hadn't done such a good job in writing their dialogue and casting them, their lack of ambition might seem depressing, and the movie might come off as some smug hymn to negativity. [9 Aug. 1991, p.F3]
