None of this is ever cheapened or tainted by the sickly stench of nostalgia. Though, demographically speaking, Linklater was born at the tail end of the baby boom, his complete and utter loathing of pining for the you-just-hadda-be-there “good old days” is 100 percent Generation X.
— Jim DeRogatis (Criterion)
The film is made up of a succession of small visions, observed and executed with apparent ease but thought through with such exquisite care and attention that the experience becomes overwhelming. Did Linklater instruct his actors in the correct way of leaning against a wall? Probably not, but then it’s the fact that doing nothing occupies the center rather than the periphery of the movie that gives such moments their verisimilitude—and Linklater has a keen, poetic memory for exactly how we did nothing.[…]
The only detail in the movie that has never rung true for me is the left-wing teacher counseling her uninterested students not to fall for the bicentennial fever awaiting them in the summer. This kind of willful collapse of formality between adults and teenagers, at least in my experience, didn’t hit until a few years later.
— Kent Jones (Criterion)
Synopsis: The adventures of a group of Texas teens on their last day of school in 1976, centering on student Randall Floyd, who moves easily among stoners, jocks and geeks. Floyd is a star athlete, but he also likes smoking weed, which presents a conundrum when his football coach demands he sign a "no drugs" pledge.