Cinema & '90s

By RICHARD CORLISS

Every summer needs an oddball movie, muttering happily to itself in a forgotten corner of the superplex while the megabudget pictures bat each other silly. So welcome to SLACKER, a parade of all-American weirdos. Writer- director Richard Linklater has borrowed the format of La Ronde -- one character talking to a second, the second to a third and so on -- and populated it with dozens of layabouts (slackers) in Austin. These motor-mouth dropouts have decided on a life of independent study: of the Kennedy assassination, or the space program (we've been on Mars since 1962, colonizing the galaxy with financing from the Medellin cartel), or Elvis (he's living in Las Vegas, working as -- what else? -- an Elvis impersonator). The wildest theories are received with a blissed-out smile. "Sorry I'm late," somebody says; the reply is "That's O.K. -- time doesn't exist." Yes, it does. Though set in the '90s, Slacker has a spirit that is pure '60s, and in this loping, loopy, sidewise, delightful comedy, Austin is Haight-Ashbury. R.C.