We travel back in time to the year 2002 where a group of up and coming actors make one of the worst comedies of all time with Slackers. We then ask the question, Was Ebert Right?
The "Sex Comedy" boom of the late 90s and early 2000s brought us a lot of good films. The likes of AMERICAN PIE, ROAD TRIP, EUROTRIP, and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER brought us a lot of laughs and even a little heart. These films you can go back to and watch many times over and always enjoy them.
Then there are the other sex comedies that came out during this time. Films like TOMCATS, DIRTY LOVE, GOOD LUCK CHUCK, and THE HOT CHICK made us question what we are doing with our lives. These films are trying to get some of that sweet "sex comedy" cash that the good films were making without doing the work. None of these films can hold a candle to SLACKERS.
Released at the beginning of 2002, SLACKERS is a college "sex comedy" in the vein of VAN WILDER but released two months prior to VAN WILDER. SLACKERS stars Devon Sawa, Jason Schwartzman, Jamie King, Laura Prepon, and Jason Segel. The film tells the tale of a creep who finds out some of his classmates are cheating so he blackmails them into hooking him up with a girl whom he is obsessed with.
When the film was released, it was torn apart by critics and anyone who was unlucky enough to see it in the theater (including me). The film carries a 10% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes (it has a 50% audience rating which is baffling). Roger Ebert gave the film zero stars, which he only gave to films he felt had no redeeming factors.
So, Was Ebert Right?
‘Slackers” is 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. Oh, and “Booty Call.” This film knows no shame.
He is 100% right here. This is a dirty film. This is the type of film where you feel like you need to take a shower afterward to clean off all the grime the film left with you. He then lists out a few sex comedies that are better, which he is 100% right on as well. The thing with those films is they are well written with likeable characters and funny situations. SLACKERS has none of those qualities.
Consider a scene where the heroine’s roommate, interrupted while masturbating, continues even while a man she has never met is in the room. Consider a scene where the hero’s roommate sings a duet with a sock puppet on his penis. Consider a scene where we cut away from the hero and the heroine to join two roommates just long enough for a loud fart, and then cut back to the main story again.
All of these scenes could have been funny if they were handled with any type of care from people who actually know what a joke is. I get what they were trying to do with the heroine's roommate scene, but it wasn't handled well. The scene with the singing penis actually made me chuckle for a half second before I realized it wasn't funny at all. Again, this is something that could have been funny, but wasn't. The cutaway gags, which happen a few times throughout the film, are clearly trying to ape FAMILY GUY, a show who's main gimick is cutaway gags. The thing is, the cutaway gags in FAMILY GUY grew old fast, something this film doesn't seem to understand. I swear they were added because the filmmakers realized they made a steaming dog turd and were trying to salvage what they could. Again, every one of these scenes COULD have been funny with the right people.
And consider a scene where Mamie Van Doren, who is 71 years old, plays a hooker in a hospital bed who bares her breasts so that the movie’s horny creep can give them a sponge bath. On the day when I saw “Slackers,” there were many things I expected and even wanted to see in a movie, but I confess Mamie Van Doren’s breasts were not among them.
I have always felt bad for actors who have to demean themselves to pay their bills. I know Mamie Van Doren was a sex symbol but having her in this film, especially with an audience where 99% of them have no idea who she is, is exploitative. Yes, being naked in a film is exploitation but here is feels mean. There's something about this scene that made me feel dirty, just like Ebert said at the beginning of his review. It doesn't help that Schwartzman is playing one of the creepiest creeps to ever show up in a "sex comedy." I am not sure this scene could actually be better. This is a scene that shouldn't even have been filmed. It's dirty. It's gross. I felt bad for Ms. Doren. She deserved better.
“Slackers” should not be confused with Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” (1991), a film that will be treasured long after this one has been turned into landfill.
I can not tell you how many times this happened around the time of the film's release. I worked at Hollywood Video when the film hit home video and there were quite a few people who rented this thinking it was SLACKER. Funny enough, it wasn't the other way around. No one mistook the Richard Linklater film for this abomination.
This demand cannot be met for a number of reasons. One of them is that Ethan is comprehensively creepy (he not only has an Angela doll made from strands of her hair, but does things with it I will not tire you by describing).
I can not even begin to describe how creepy Ethan is. This is the character played by Schwartzman, and I guess I have to say he does an amazing job at being the creepiest. creep whoever creeped. We are expected to laugh at Ethan's creepiness but he is so unlikeable that we are kind of scared of him. You can have a creepy villain in your sex comedy but you have to give them a small bit of humanity. SLACKERS does not do this. Instead, they double down of Ethan's creepiness and drive it up to eleven. This guy could out creep Diddy, Jared from Subway, and Jimmy Saville combined. You should not have a character like this in a sex comedy, even if they are the villain. The film went too far in this aspect.
Knowing that this movie will be block-booked into countless multiplexes, pitying the audiences that stumble into it, I want to stand in line with those kids and whisper the names of other movies now in release: “Monster's Ball,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Gosford Park,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Or even “Orange County,” also about screwed-up college students, but in an intelligent and amusing way. There are a lot of good movies in theaters right now. Why waste two hours (which you can never get back) seeing a rotten one?
I have always hated it when Ebert would write things like this. It is clear he hates the film and I get he wants to push people towards other, possibly better films. The thing is, the films he mentions are not films the audience for SLACKERS would want to see instead. Sure, he throws in ORANGE COUNTY as an afterthought but the other films still stand. The age of the audience for SLACKERS would be anywhere from 13 all the way to mid-20s. Most of the people in this age range are not going to choose GOSFORD PARK over SLACKERS. It doesn't matter if GOSFORD PARK is technically a better film than SLACKERS. When you are that age, you normally don't want to sit in a stuffy theater watching stuffy people doing stuffy stuff. They want to see a man sing a duet with his penis. Whispering "A BEAUTIFUL MIND into the ear of a kid trying to buy a ticket to a sex comedy is an easy way to get banned from that theater. I kid, but him writing this shows how out of touch he was with the youth of that era.
So, was Ebert right? Fuck yes! SLACKERS is a horrendous piece of trash. There is no way no one at the studio read this and said "yes." How is it that this film was able to get the cast it has (Sawa was coming off of FINAL DESTINATION, Prepon was on THAT 70s SHOW, and King was coming off of two very high profile films, PEARL HARBOR and BLOW) is beyond me. I guess they all really needed paychecks. I can't fault anyone for that but I don't know if I would have been able to take this thing on, no matter what they paid me. There have been very few comedies that have repulsed me as SLACKERS did. The filmmakers clearly took the wrong meaning from the term "gross out comedy." They leaned way too far into the gross and forgot the comedy. Simply presenting a gross thing does not make it funny.
I remember watching this in the theater. I used to go and watch damn near anything during this time and I figured Ebert was wrong in his review. I figured it was going to be more of an "old man yells at cloud" thing but the dude was right on the money. I hated watching this thing in the theater. I wanted to leave so badly but I don't leave films I find bad. There could always be something that turns the tide. It doesn't happen normally but it does happen. I couldn't believe how bad this thing was. I remember working at Hollywood Video when this thing hit video and trying to persuade people not to rent it. I even offered a free rental if they dug their feet into the ground on the matter. I really did not want people watching this thing. Even when I watched it today, I was instantly sent back to that cold, dark theater in February of 2002, sitting there rolling my eyes or hiding my head in shame every time something "funny" happened. I hated the experience then and I hated it now. This is the type of film that could end careers.
SLACKERS is the equivalent of a child running into a room, yelling SOCK PENIS at the top of his lungs, expecting people to laugh. Sure, the shock is there, but no one is laughing.
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