Avoid `Slackers' at all costs
By ADAM WELTLER
Scene Movie Critic
Learning sanskrit, shaving a cat, making a model of the pyramids out of cheese cubes: These are all better and more productive ways to spend 90 minutes rather than watching "Slackers." Unoriginal, unfunny, and disgustingly unclean, "Slackers" takes toilet humor to a new and unnecessary low.
Ever since "There's Something About Mary," films have challenged themselves to out-gross each other, sometimes with humorous results. However, they should never leave the audience wanting to shower away the memory of having seen such blue humor.
The plot of "Slackers" revolves around a group of three college con men who have made a lifestyle out of cheating. They pull elaborate schemes one after another to cheat their way through college. But their plans and their futures are in jeopardy when one of them, Dave (Devon Sawa), falls in love with Angela (James King). The problem is that the sick and psychotic Ethan (Jason Schwartzman of "Rushmore") is obsessed with Angela and has the proof that could get the group of cheaters expelled. He blackmails all of them to help him woo Angela and they are forced to use their skills to save themselves. The plot thickens when Angela starts to fall in love with Dave, much to Ethan's dismay.
The story itself is tired and hackneyed. However, the scenes of the slackers at work are enjoyable. One has to admire the planning and precision that must have gone into each of their schemes, but the disgusting humor that fills the rest of the film more than distracts the viewer from any interest in the cheating subplot.
Masturbation, naked breasts of older women (even if it is Mamie Van Doren; for the love of God, she's 70), a man singing to a sock puppet on his penis, urinating in the shower; it seems as though the studios are trying to test the limits of what can and cannot be in films today. This reviewer is for the first amendment 100 percent, but when a film can't even find a way to make flatulence humor funny, something is terribly wrong.
Jason Schwartzman, hilarious in "Rushmore," does his best to bring a likeable side to Ethan, but the script makes him just too creepy. Ethan's antics cause the viewer to literally cringe and wonder if such people actually exist. And if they do, why aren't they locked away to be studied? He worships a doll made out of Angela's hair that he has collected off the back of her seat in class. Sadly, that is one of the least offensive things he does.
The rest of the characters are incredibly one-dimensional. Angela is dense and unbelievable. Of the slackers, Sawa's character is the most developed, but he can't do much to help this film from its inevitable decent into the tenth level of hell.
In this world, nothing is completely bad, and "Slackers" has a few moments that make the audience chuckle instead of groan. And some of the dialogue draws a smile. The actors deliver their lines well, and they deserve credit for saying moronic dialogue with such precision. But one also has to think that the money put into this film could have been better spent on, well, anything else.
So don't even wait for this film to come to video. Spend your time doing something else, even physics if you have to. Some of you might be drawn into wanting to see it because of how horrible it is, like when you gawk at a car crash on the side of the road. Don't. Life is too short.
To paraphrase "Billy Madison," everyone in the audience is now dumber for having seen this film. I award it no shamrocks, and may God have mercy on your souls. -- Zero shamrocks
Contact Adam Weltler at aweltler@nd.edu.
All Scene Stories for Thursday, February 7, 2002
