Slackers

Not to be confused with the far superior Richard Linklater film, Slacker, Slackers is a 2002 college comedy directed by Dewey Nicks, which I believe is his only film, a good thing.

The college comedy started pretty much at the top, with National Lampoon's Animal House, and has floundered since then. Slackers is an example of that. It has momentary elements of humor, but its appeal is basically limited to the frat boy mentality, and that's pushing it.

The title is even wrong. Focusing on three students at fictional Holden College, these guys actually work very hard, though their efforts are on cheating, and not on studying. The film opens with a long scene in which they connive to steal a test booklet, and then one student, our hero (Devon Sawa) gets the questions for his roommate (Jason Segel), which are then answered by an expert. Segel conspires to make it look he's broken his leg in an accident, and takes a makeup test. This also involves rerouting a cross-country race and breaking into a moving FedEx truck. That's a lot of work.

The gang's cheating escapade is discovered by Jason Schwartzman, playing a singularly repellent psychotic stalker. I wonder if Schwartzman looks back at this role at all with any kind of embarrassment. He does give it his all, I credit him for that, but it's so over the top it lacks any kind of credibility. He's obsessed with beauty James King (now she's called Jamie, I believe), even to the point of gathering her fallen hair, with which he's made a doll with. He makes a deal with the cheaters--he won't get them expelled if they can get her the girl. They undertake it, but of course Sawa falls in love with her.

As the police say, nothing to see here. Segel, who has also outgrown roles like this, is pretty funny, and Michael Maronna, who I have never seen before, plays the third of the group, a sexually confused young man who turns his penis into a sock puppet. That's the kind of level of comedy we're dealing with.