Slackers ***
Directed by: Dewey Nicks
Written by: David H. Steinberg
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, James King, Devon Sawa, Michael C. Maronna, Jason Segel, and Laura Prepon
Rated R (language, drug use, brief nudity, naughty bits, and it’s a college movie)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not another teen movie.

It’s not charting new comedic ground, it doesn’t re-write the rules of cinema, and it has cheap laughs. However, don’t go into Slackers expecting Porky’s or American Pie. You’ll just be confused if you do.

Now, if you haven’t gathered it from the previews, here’s a synopsis. Dave (Sawa) and his friends Sam (Segel) and Jeff (Maronna) are scam artists. Not for the benefit of others, just for themselves. They don’t actually want to have to study for tests and such. They execute elaborate schemes to get what they want, whether it’s passing a final or getting a girl. They’re awfully good at it, too. Unfortunately, Dave gets caught by Ethan (Schwartzman). Ethan won’t expose the crew, provided that they get Angela (King) to be his girlfriend. On my signal, unleash wacky college pranks.

What the previews don’t show you is what makes this movie the best comedy I’ve seen this year. Any movie that has the audacity to use a symphonic version of “Baba O’Reily” by The Who as the opening theme has plenty to live up to. Fortunately, it does.

First off, the story is just different enough to stand out from the crowd. In PCU and Animal House, the wacky pranks were wacky, and enabled the guys to keep their charter/house. Everyone had fun at the big party, everyone got drunk, and, ooooh, did they show that crusty old dean. In Slackers, on the other hand, the wacky hijinks are a way of life for the gang. Slackers, my friends, is cleverly disguised film noir! Move the fellas from a college campus to the seedy underbelly of some unnamed American city. Instead of scamming grades, have them scam, oh, I don’t know, insurance companies. See where I’m going with this? Add the femme fatale, the desire for one of the hoods to go straight, and away we go!

Secondly, it changes the styles of comedy that it uses. It has fart jokes, and they work. It has bits of absurdist (think Monty Python) humor. Throw in some surrealism, some Benny Hill-style bawdiness, some Norm MacDonald catch-phrases, break the ‘fourth wall’ and add some quick-paced dialogue, and you get just the kick in the pants that ‘teen’ comedies have needed for a long time.

Thirdly, I loved the cast. I think that the only person other than Jason Schwartzman who could have played Ethan is Ben Stiller. You might have seen Schwartzman in Rushmore. Odds are that you didn’t, because the film, while quite good, didn’t really go anywhere in the box office. Trust me – he’s good. Michael C. Maronna is good too. You might have seen him from the Nickelodeon TV show ”The Adventures of Pete and Pete”. Maronna was Big Pete. You’ll recognize Laura Prepon as Eric’s girlfriend from “That 70s Show”. Devon Sawa is a teen heartthrob, but he’s able to bring the right degree of passion to the character. James King has the right degree of innocence and silliness to play Angela effectively.

What didn’t I like about this movie? The pacing seemed to suffer in the middle. Part of this may have been that in a traditional film noir piece, the middle is where the tension really starts to build. The beginning establishes characters and sets the ball rolling. In the middle, plot twists are added, one on top of another, until the climax and epilogue, when we realize that, hey, it’s Chinatown. That particular convention doesn’t really work with comedy.

I also didn’t really like the ending. Again, it’s probably a holdover from noir. It has a terrible film noir ending, but a standard college movie ending. It wasn’t a letdown, however, because, cinematically it was great. It was theatrical, rather than cinematic. It looks like I’m contradicting myself, but, trust me, I’m not. (You’re thinking right now, “But, you just said that it was great cinematically because it wasn’t cinematic. I don’t get it...” You will when you see it.)

Slackers isn’t a spoof. It’s not a send-up of a genre. It’s not strictly a college movie, and it’s certainly not a teen sex-farce. It’s not character driven, it’s plot driven. It’s film noir without the existentialism. Film noir-light, I guess. Go and see it, but, don’t put your faith in the previews. They’re not lying, they’re just hiding the best stuff.