Slackistan

If all you've seen & know about Pakistan is Taliban, terrorism & natural disasters, then Slackistan will come as a very nice surprise to you. This is one side of Pakistani life that we don't see on CNN. Slackistan is a few days in the life of four westernized, young elite Pakistanis. They spend their days eating hamburgers, sitting at coffee shops, going to parties and drinking. They are the Facebook generation and look like any American or European of their age. The main protagonist Hasan is an aspiring film maker. He is a bit bored of bumming around in Islamabad with his friends and wants to make a movie. Before that though, he has to fix a few problems for his friends. Slackistan is very entertaining and is very much in the tradition of American independent films like Metropolitan, Diner, etc. Recommended.

The movie is very bad.It don't even look like a movie.Its cinematography looks like a low-budget documentary. The movie itself has no story or point. It is about five friends.There is no character development is film.Sometimes movie tries to be funny but its not.A very boring film. The only thing in film is good-looking cast.I don't recommend anyone to watch this movie.

Watching Slackistan is a bit like sitting through one of the less eventful episodes of Beverley Hills 90210 but one where the supply of Prozac and peroxide had been cruelly cut off.

Throughout the first hour the key characters drift about morbidly trying to decide which swanky western-style bar or ice cream parlour they want to mope around in. These depressing kids are shown to be so incredibly "Western" that they end up being barely believable. The soundtrack is exclusively western music and the dialogue is a curious and illogical mix of Punjabi and English. The end result is that it just doesn't feel real.

The premise of this film seems to be that some kids in Islamabad are "just like us" and wear western clothes, get drunk and dance in underground nightclubs to rock music. Yes, no doubt some do but the characters just aren't convincing, you don't care what happens to them and the vague plot trudges along so tediously that it leaves you wondering if someone spiked your drink with Mogadon on the way in.

I'm afraid that after an hour of this with still nothing happening and not even the consolation of being made to laugh just once we gave up and left the cinema to find something else to do.

A weak, amateur attempt at filmmaking. The film portrays the every day lives of some apparently hip kids in Islamabad. While this could be 'original' in the sense that very few people get to see the lives of said kids (thank god), it still has a weak conflict, weak characters and completely forgettable dialogue. The movie crew seem to pride themselves on these qualities. Every time a character said something that was supposed to be insightful or funny, I kept asking myself, "Why should I care?" Why should i care what a group of boring, good-for-nothing slackers say? I only paid 2 dollars to watch this film in a theater in Lahore and still felt robbed. If you value your time and money, steer clear of this film!