Film Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Slacker
Directed by Richard Linklater
MGM Home Entertainment 07/91 DVD/VHS Feature Film
R - language

Slacker is an innovative film with its zany portraits of dropouts from the world of work and adult responsibility in Austin, Texas. Writer, director, and producer Richard Linklater presents a series of vignettes of twentysomething men and women whose lives revolve around talk. The filmmaker follows one character for a while, then picks up on the conversation of someone walking by, then shifts to yet another peripheral individual who becomes the central focus. In all some 100 characters drift in and out of the film. These street philosophers, mostly unemployed, muse about anarchy, political conspiracies, alternate realities, and various pet peeves. Slacker reveals in a very concrete way the fragmentation of popular culture and the very deep differences between various generations. The film is weird, funny, and scary all at the same time.

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat