There are laughs here, but easily as many groans.
Slackers (2002)
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Reviews Counted:104
Fresh:10
Rotten:94
Average Rating:3.1/10
Consensus: Another teen comedy with little on its mind but moving to the next gross-out gag, Slackers strains for laughs and features grating characters.
Runtime: 86 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Dave (Devon Sawa), Sam (Jason Segel) and Jeff (Michael C. Maronna) are about to graduate from Holden University with Honors in lying, cheating and scheming. The three roommates have proudly scammed... Dave (Devon Sawa), Sam (Jason Segel) and Jeff (Michael C. Maronna) are about to graduate from Holden University with Honors in lying, cheating and scheming. The three roommates have proudly scammed their way through the last four years of college and now, during final exams, these big-men-on-campus are about to be busted by the most unlikely dude in school. Self-dubbed Cool Ethan (Jason Schwartzman), an ambitious nerd with a bad crush, enters their lives one day and everything begins to unravel. When Ethan accidentally catches Dave in an exam scam and gathers some incriminating evidence against him, Dave and his friends find themselves completely at his mercy. Threatening to expose the three Slackers Ethan offers a deal: he’ll let the guys off the hook on one condition – that they use their unethical expertise to get him the object of his desire, the brainy babe Angela (James King). Dave agrees to the plan, thinking this will be the easiest con they’ve pulled all semester. In no time they’ll return to drinking beer, picking up girls and paying smarter students to take their tests for them. There are just two problems. First of all, Cool Ethan’s experience with women is, to say the least, minimal. Secondly, and perhaps more problematically, when Dave meets the incredible Angela he starts to fall for her himself. Ethan soon discovers that despite Dave’s help and his own pathetic attempts at seduction, Angela isn’t interested in him – she’s falling for Dave. Refusing to see the writing on the wall, Ethan sabotages their relationship, and in a final attempt to insinuate himself, provides Angela with ‘a shoulder to cry on.’ To get revenge, Ethan also cancels the deal, announcing that Dave and his friends are going down, putting all of their futures at risk. But Cool Ethan just may have underestimated this trio. -- © 2001 Screen Gems [More]
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Jamie King, Jason Segel, Michael C. Maronna
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Jamie King, Jason Segel, Michael C. Maronna, Devon Sawa, Laura Prepon, Mamie Van Doren
Director: Dewey Nicks
Director: Dewey Nicks
Screenwriter: David H. Steinberg
Producer: Erik Feig, Neal H. Moritz
Studio: Screen Gems
Reviews for Slackers
I believe there are some tiny suggestions of hilarity to be found under all the clichéd nonsense.
The footage seems to have been tossed into the air and randomly reassembled when it hit the ground.
It's too interested in jerking off in all its Byzantine incarnations to bother pleasuring its audience.
Slackers is yet another movie that gives too many of its gags away in the trailer.
The simple fact is, I laughed more than not-laughed at the movie -- a fact I'm almost embarrassed to admit.
For every scene of twisted glee, there are two or three that are twisted in the wrong way.
A negligent film that never follows through with its promise to be funny.
So putrid it is not worth the price of the match that should be used to burn every print of the film.
All in all, there's only one thing to root for: expulsion for everyone.
Although no pastry is violated, this nasty comedy pokes fun at the same easy targets as other rowdy raunch-fests -- farts, boobs, unmentionables -- without much success.
It's hard to find the laughs in a story about three cheaters fighting a pervert.
The whole thing feels completely disposable -- headed for the shower drain of comedy, as it were.
About the only good thing that can be said about Slackers is that it means critics and viewers will have to find one less awful film to complete their list of the year's worst offerings.
I can take infantile humor ... but this is the sort of infantile that makes you wonder about changing the director and writer's diapers.
The tastelessness of its jokes is nothing compared to its sheer cluelessness.
This will go on so long as there are moviegoers anxious to see strange young guys doing strange guy things.
A tired, unimaginative and derivative variation of that already-shallow genre.
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