Slackers

Starring Jason Schwartzman, Devon Sawa, Jason Siegel, Michael C. Maronna, James King
Screenplay by David H. Steinberg
Directed by Dewey Nicks
website: www..com

IN SHORT: feh. [Rated R for strong language and sexual content, and brief drug use. 87 minutes]

For the first thirty seconds or so, as classical sounding violins and acoustic bass strum out what you will recognize as one of the greatest hits of the loudest rock 'n' roll band of all time -- no, wait, rock is out now so for those of you who rap the song is Baba O'Reilly by The Who -- Slackers gave us hope that this aimed at teens dumb comedy might actually be a wee bit clever. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there in a film that will find its audience in all them fifteen year olds who get the righteous thrill from sneaking into an "R" rated movie. Slackers is so utterly devoid of anything humorous that it falls back on the old trick of filling the dialog with enough words beginning with the letter "f" to mandate a rating which inspires fifteen year olds everywhere. We've been there. We know the feeling. We'd want a helluva lot more nudity than this would be bit o' teen trash delivers.

If Sam (Jason Siegel), Dave (Devon Sawa) and Jeff (Michael C. Maronna) work as hard in grown up life as they do to cheat on their college examinations, they may amount to something. Check this out: one goes to the exam to copy the questions. They get a smart kid to write the answers. Then the real student, with the help of henchman number three, fakes a traffic accident and limps into the professor's office on crutches, to convince the old fool to let him take the same exam. They can get away with this shtick because the classes at Holden U. are so jammed that neither the professor nor the TA that administers the test has any idea who the students are. What's wrong with this scenario? Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. We'll wait.

What's wrong is that if the professor/TA is so dumb as not to know their own students, then there's no point in going to the extraordinary length to sneak into class. Just send the smart kid to take the test instead. But enough of logic and thinking so much, let's just laugh!

Oh, let's not and say we did. Which is Slackers in a nutshell. Cost in your dollars (give or take): ten. Number of laughs: less than half that. But that's just us. You may get six. For if ever there was a reason to legalize the sale of marijuana, Slackers is it. You'll need a bong or two to get thoroughly blitzed, better yet get thoroughly unconscious, at which point some of this drivel may strike you as funny.

Said drivel is generated by the evil, vicious and nasty nerd "Cool" Ethan (Jason Schwartzman) who threatens to blow the whistle on our trio, unless they help fix him up with the extremely lovely Angela (James King). This they try to do, though Ethan is not without access or lacking verbal opportunities with the babe, who much prefers the company of the blonde haired Dave. He, as if this lame-oid comedy needed some conflict to get laughs, doesn't find the lady to his liking. One glimpse of a wet bikini later -- and that's the best you're going to get out of leading lady King, despite the "R" rating -- and Dave and Angela are a done deal. All that's left is to get Ethan out of the picture.

The language is gratuitous. The nudity is not only gratuitous, it's not even attractive. The humor is invisible. There's so little creative talent expended to make this excuse for a movie that the title may as well describe the creative "process" rather than the title characters. 'nuff said.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Nine Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Slackers, he would have paid . . .

$0.00

Follow the example of the title. Slack off and stay at home.

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