This unconventional film will offend anyone looking for a plot, but Linklater's smart observations speak volumes.

When the way characters are described in the credits ("Dostoevsky wanna-be," "Having a breakthrough day") is more involving than the characters themselves, you know you're in for a long evening.

The film presents the teeming weirdness of daily life in Austin as a swarm of individual alternatives, each spinning wildly out of control and crashing into one another's active fantasies to unleash vast creative energy.

For viewers, the radical Slacker generously provides a singular experience, one in which every possible idle curiosity that might occur to us about all the people we see on screen is satisfied.