Slacker

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Slacker

R,

1991,

1h 37m,

Comedy

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Watchlist

82%

45 Reviews

Tomatometer

77%

10,000+ Ratings

Popcornmeter

82%

Tomatometer

45 Reviews

77%

Popcornmeter

10,000+ Ratings

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 (Richard Linklater) who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie (Rudy Basquez), a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.

Critics Consensus

Slacker rests its shiftless thumb on the pulse of a generation with fresh filmmaking that captures the tenor of its time while establishing a benchmark for 1990s indie cinema.

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Kim Newman

Empire Magazine

Mar 14, 2021

4/5

This unconventional film will offend anyone looking for a plot, but Linklater's smart observations speak volumes.

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Kenneth Turan

Los Angeles Times

Mar 14, 2021

When the way characters are described in the credits ("Dostoevsky wanna-be," "Having a breakthrough day") is more involving than the characters themselves, you know you're in for a long evening.

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Richard Brody

The New Yorker

Mar 30, 2020

The film presents the teeming weirdness of daily life in Austin as a swarm of individual alternatives, each spinning wildly out of control and crashing into one another's active fantasies to unleash vast creative energy.

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Farah Cheded

A Good Movie To Watch

Aug 12, 2023

79/100

For viewers, the radical Slacker generously provides a singular experience, one in which every possible idle curiosity that might occur to us about all the people we see on screen is satisfied.

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Brett Doze

InSession Film

May 2, 2023

B+

Slacker is certainly not the only, nor the most influential of low-budget independent filmmaking from the 1990s. But it is a model example of a feature depicting traits that came to define a filmmaker’s career...

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Jeffrey M. Anderson

Common Sense Media

Mar 14, 2021

4/5

Each new character lasts only a few minutes, but the bigger picture is one of the most memorable movies about young people trying to find themselves.

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Jan 26, 2019

The best comedy movie ever made!

Poe W

Dec 30, 2018

Instead of following a clear story or plot, it very much unfolds like Alice following the white rabbit. The camera gets passed on every few minutes, introducing you to about a dozen, largely unrelated, characters. It is taking place in real time, giving you a unique snapshot of Austin and it's young intellectual slackers at the time.

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Luke W

Aug 19, 2018

The main character is so annoying that he makes the whole thing impossible to watch.

Albus L

Apr 10, 2018

It's hard to exactly ascribe a rating to Slacker, because it's really a film of its time, and no time else. The pre-9/11 paranoia of the youth of the United States feels stunningly naive now in a way it can't have back then. I've seen this movie described as a "rambling series of vignettes roaming from interesting weirdo to interesting weirdo" and I cant help but disagree with that last bit. These people aren't interesting - not even to each other. They're idiots with both far too much and too little to say, and even bore each other after five minutes a pop. That said, I don't think it was Linklater's intention to paint them as geniuses, or as anything other than shiftless goofballs in transition to a more fully formed and tolerable version of themselves.

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Abraham W

Aug 23, 2017

A series of monologues so uninteresting that not even the other characters in the movie want to hear them.

Rey W

Apr 23, 2017

Slacker is a very cool film that randomly follows around a bunch of different hippy weirdo types. Very unique and different.

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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 (Richard Linklater) who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie (Rudy Basquez), a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.

Director: Richard Linklater
Producer: Richard Linklater
Screenwriter: Richard Linklater
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 18, 2016
Runtime: 1h 37m
Sound Mix: Surround

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