In today's booming economy it can be hard to remember how gloomy things were back in 1990. Many people in the post-college wasteland of 20-something life felt extremely depressed about the future of America. If you had told people back then that in a few years the Internet would boom and many of those recent college graduates would become BILLIONAIRES most people would have laughed their asses off. Unenployment was high and crime seemed to be happening at an astronomical rate.
I bring all this up because it is necessary to put yourself in that frame of mind if you want to understand why this film was so good. It so perfectly captures all the different ways that people faced up to the increasingly bleak world around them.
Basically, Slacker is to movies what Nirvana was to music, for many of us back then it was the first movie to come along that seemed to be about us for us and by us. It was the first real independant movie I ever saw and for me it rang true like few films I have ever seen.
It is a movie without a plot which will make a lot of people hate this film, but it is one of the most brilliantly executed concept films I have ever seen. Basically the film deftly weaves itself through Austin, Texas during the course of 24-hours not focusing on any one story but instead jumping from one person on to another.
The formula is this: We see Jake leave his apartment, Jake runs into Larry in the bookstore and they talk, then we follow Larry as he leaves the bookstore and runs into Susan at the cafe, when Susan leaves we follow her and leave Larry behind and so on and so on... Some of the characters are boring some are very funny and some are scary. But it is this realistic mix of different people that makes the film so good.
This film is really not for everyone especially now that the world has changed so much, but anybody who is a little cynical about mainstream America will probably love this film.




Recommended: Yes