Slackers

USA Today Mike Clark

There are laughs here, but easily as many groans.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Before immediately handing the movie an F and sending it off to summer school, give the filmmakers, and especially co-star Jason Schwartzman, credit for their anarchic willingness to try anything to shock a laugh loose from an audience.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

So patchy in its laughs, so calculated in its grossness and so lacking in genuine comic exuberance, it makes you look at "Road Trip" in an admiring new light.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Once again, we have a movie where the jokes are aimed at the least common denominator - meaning that to genuinely enjoy the experience of sitting through Slackers, you will need help from a controlled substance.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

A disappointing venture. If only it had been more clever, perhaps darker.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie doesn't so much extend Schwartzman's antic outsider persona from ''Rushmore'' as uglify it, reducing him to the ultimate Uncool Anti-WASP.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

The most that can be said for Slackers -- aside from the unqualified pleasure of Schwartzman's unfaked, puppyish weirdness -- is that it doesn't abandon its putrid ideals for the sake of a neat finish.

Variety Robert Koehler

Awful and subversively spunky at the same time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The roll call of perversions and adolescent sex gags are more creepy than kooky and the sudden shift to triumphant romantic sincerity at the climax rings as false as this film's sappy (sorry, happy) ending.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Slackers depends on the pathetic Ethan and the flatulent Sam for most of its laughs, and both characters are more revolting than amusing.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A discordant comedy that gives bad taste a bad name.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

An odd little movie. And not in a good way.

Boston Globe Jonathan Perry

There's scant character development, pedestrian dialogue, and an almost complete lack of humor.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Slackers is supposed to be a gross-out comedy, but the tastelessness of its jokes is nothing compared to its sheer cluelessness.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Schwartzman steals Slackers without much effort, but it's not worth the theft.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

The title not only describes its main characters, but the lazy people behind the camera as well.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The gags are familiar collegiate stuff, involving horny young men, horny old whores -- horny young tramps -- silly foreigners, uptight authority figures, homosexuals and sassy fat women.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A standard issue undergrad gross-out comedy notable only for the showy role it provides Jason Schwartzman, well-remembered as "Rushmore's" geeky high school student Max Fischer.

Chicago Tribune Patrick Z. McGavin

Not only is Slackers painfully bad, but it's also about as morally unpleasant as a teen sex comedy can be.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Slackers is, well, consummately cheesy. Ugh.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A shit stain on the genre.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

How bad is it? Let me count just some of the ways.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

So lazy and slipshod it confuses the mere flashing of kinky soft-core imagery with naughty fun.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A dirty movie. Not a sexy, erotic, steamy or even smutty movie, but a just plain dirty movie. It made me feel unclean, and I'm the guy who liked "There's Something About Mary" and both "American Pie" movies.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Barely proficient on a craft level, this jumble of putatively comic misunderstanding and overly familiar crude burlesque achieves its nadir with a cameo from Mamie Van Doren, a degrading, shameful turn that lays bare, all too literally, the filmmakers' contempt for women.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A singularly distasteful campus romp.

New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson

Alas, Slackers sucks. It's so bad Schwartzman can't save it, though he tries mightily; a flash of nudity from Pearl Harbor babe and male-named model-turned-actress James King isn't even worth the price of a video rental down the line.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Stinks like a cat box that hasn't been changed in a hundred years.