SummarySlacker presents a day in the life in Austin, Texas among its social outcasts and misfits using a series of linear vignettes.
Directed By:Richard Linklater
Written By:Richard Linklater
Slacker
Metascore
Generally Favorable
69
User score
Generally Favorable
7.9
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
69
88% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
13% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
91
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.
80
This unconventional film will offend anyone looking for a plot, but Linklater's smart observations speak volumes.
User score
Generally Favorable
7.9
84% Positive
26 Ratings
26 Ratings
16% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Mar 4, 2021
10
This is a great film. This is a great film. This is a great film. This is a great film.
Jul 1, 2016
8
80/100 Consistently fascinating and entertaining, which is a coup for a plotless film in which the primary characters change every scene. The nadir of this gimmick is early in the film, when one of the vignettes relies too much on perturbing incident rather than the meandering pseudo-philosophy conversations that make up the rest of the film. Not to worry, as the film makes up for it with hilarious moments like a woman selling Madonna's Pap smear, a guy living in a room full of televisions, and an old man teaching a burglar about the merits of anarchism. And there's a kind of understated sadness to these aimless people, like the kids that steal Pepsis to sell to people, or the Kennedy-assassination theorist who immediately starts talking about Jack Ruby's dog when someone asks how he is. By the end, Slacker has turned into a sort of "portrait of a city film", in this case Dallas, Texas; one feels like they have the complete feel of the weirdest corners of a city they've been to not once.
80
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
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
Linklater`s creation is delightfully daffy-far better, as one of the slackers puts it, than a sharp stick in the eye.
70
The members of Mr. Linklater's cast, most of whom are non-professionals, are so amazingly effective that it's hard to believe they didn't make up their own lunacies.
30
Aside from preserving these folks for a presumably grateful posterity and convincingly depicting Austin as an open-air lunatic asylum, Slacker does not offer much to anyone who likes to stay awake.
Feb 23, 2017
6
A meandering, hilarious, and ultimately pointless tour of Austin Texas and the lazy souls lost in it - or in other words: a pure Linklater. Raught with rants of conspiracy, anti-establishmentarianism, and existentialism, this foundational piece sets in motion the spirit that occupies his entire filmography.
Awards
Film Independent Spirit Awards
• 2 Nominations
National Film Preservation Board, USA
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Sundance Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
