Slacker | Rotten Tomatoes

Slacker

R

1991

1 hr. 37 min.

Comedy

List

82%

45 Reviews

Tomatometer

77%

10,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

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.

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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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Augustine J

I watched this movie because I absolutely loved Dazed and Confused and wanted to see more Richard Linklater movies. However, Slacker did not sit well with me. I do applaud its creative vignettes, which sometimes got a chuckle out of me, but over all this movie was boring and uninteresting. It took me multiple attempts to finish it and I when I did it just left me with a unsatisfying ending.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

11/01/23

Full Review

Pam H

Defines an entire generation. The most iconic Gen X movie ever made.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

09/09/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This is the precursor to Dazed and Confused. Set in the dawning of the 90s in Austin,TX , and shot at that exact place and time. Despite being shot in the actual time it was set, the characters are not as well acted(which you can't blame them for much, it was mainly a cast of locals thrown together while the director was in film school). But even the writing is more over the top(or maybe the amount eccentric people in 1990 Austin was just off the charts, who knows). Either way, it's not terrible, but it leads to an experience that just doesn't flow as well as Linklaters later films of the same type. 6.25/10

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/31/23

Full Review

steve c

A collection of random conversations ... no plot ... nothing ... wth. I guess the real slackers are the people who wrote this film.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

s r

1001 movies to see before you die. Props for originality in showing Austin, TX in a different light. It sometimes seemed faked, but regardless it still was interesting. I do not plan on seeing it again. It was on youtube.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

William L

"It's almost impossible to find someone that can think outside of their own caste system right now. I mean look at this man across the street in a tie, this ruling class man, and he's actually suffering from oxygen deprivation, he's braindead. ... Can I sell you a shirt?" A stream-of-consciousness style plot in which a series of character vignettes bleed into one another with no overarching narrative, Slacker is a comedic depiction of Austin, Texas as told through young idealists, students, eccentrics, and knockabouts. Characters are introduced only to provide their contribution to the strange tapestry of personalities at play; using rushed conversation, little in the way of backstory or context, and candid dialogue, Linklater portrays the city in a unique but realistic way, as a series of individuals at the center of their own stories, however off-kilter or self-important they may be. Many of the problems that characters face (near-identical to those ordinary people face today), and in particular the conversational style of dialogue that the director employs, make Slacker a very stalwart piece of film, still relatable and engaging despite the years that have gone by. You don't need to have been offered Madonna's pap smear to relate to similar experiences walking down the street in your own city. An important film for Linklater as well, as one of the director's first features to reach a sizable audience, and to establish his utilization of loosely-structured narratives. Unlike several of his other films, though, he doesn't need to return to the same source material years later, because Slacker still feels fresh decades down the line. (3.5/5)

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/08/22

Full Review

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Richard Linklater

Director

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Mark James

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Kim Newman

Empire Magazine

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

Rated: 4/5

Mar 14, 2021

Full Review

Kenneth Turan

Los Angeles Times

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.

Mar 14, 2021

Full Review

Richard Brody

New Yorker

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.

Mar 30, 2020

Full Review

Farah Cheded

A Good Movie To Watch

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.

Rated: 79/100

Aug 12, 2023

Full Review

Brett Doze

InSession Film

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...

Rated: B+

May 2, 2023

Full Review

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Common Sense Media

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.

Rated: 4/5

Mar 14, 2021

Full Review

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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
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 18, 2016
Sound Mix: Surround

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