How low can you go?
What was once the clarion call of limbo dancers has become the credo of certain Hollywood filmmakers.
Youth films like American Pie and Road Trip opened the envelope, so flicks like Freddie Got Fingered could push it to the limit.
Slackers may not be as unredeemably gross as Freddie Got Fingered, but it comes a close second.
Just as 10 Things I Hate About You was inspired by Taming of the Shrew and She's All That by Pygmalion, Slackers looks to Cyrano de Bergerac for its premise.
Ethan (Jason Schwartzman) is a nerdish college senior who is fixated on the sweet, beautiful Angela (James King).
She is so far out of his league she doesn't even realize he is vying for her attention.
When Ethan stumbles upon the cheating tactics of Dave (Devon Sawa), Sam (Jason Segel) and Jeff (Michael Moronna), he seizes upon a golden opportunity.
Unless Dave, Sam and Jeff get Angela to fall in love with him, Ethan will expose the trio's underhanded methods.
Not a bad premise, but what screenwriter David H. Steinberg does with it is repugnant.
Ethan is a dangerous, sexually repressed stalker.
Schwartzman, who showed such promise in Rushmore, tries desperately to make Ethan's creepy antics funny, but it's a losing battle.
There's a running joke that Maronna's Jeff may be gay, but Steinberg fails to give this storyline a payoff of any kind.
As Angela's oversexed roommate, Laura Prepon is an embarrassment. Prepon, who is so funny as Donna on That 70s Show, stoops to some ugly depths.
Cameron Diaz must owe someone a favour to appear in an uncredited cameo, but no one suffers more than former '50s sexpot Mamie Van Doren.
The 70-year-old actress has a topless scene that is unconscionable.
Sawa and King seem to be in different movies. They have scenes which border on normal and both show glimpses of actual acting.
It's difficult to conceive of anyone who has reached puberty actually finding the characters in Slackers or their antics amusing, let alone funny.
Hopefully, there is some accounting for taste and Slackers will die a quick, merciless box-office death.
(More on: Slackers).
(This film is rated AA)
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