Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film an "A-" rating, writing, ""Slacker" has a marvelously low-key observational cool ... the movie never loses its affectionate, shaggy-dog sense of America as a place in which people, by now, have almost too much freedom on their hands". In his review for the "Washington Post", Hal Hinson wrote, "This is a work of scatterbrained originality, funny, unexpected and ceaselessly engaging". "Rolling Stone"s Peter Travers wrote, "What Linklater has captured is a generation of bristling minds unable to turn their thoughts into action. Linklater has the gift of a true satirist: He can make laughter catch in the throat". In his review for the "Austin Chronicle", Chris Walters wrote, "Few of the many films shot in Austin over the past 10 or 15 years even attempt to make something of the way its citizens live. "Slacker" is the only one I know of that claims this city's version of life on the margins of the working world as its whole subject, and it is one of the first American movies ever to find a form so apropos to the themes of disconnectedness and cultural drift". "Time" magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "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". On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 7.35/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Slacker" rests its shiftless thumb on the pulse of a generation with fresh filmmaking that captures the tenor of its time while establishing a benchmark for 1990s indie cinema." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". American Film Institute recognition:  "Slacker" was released on VHS in June 1992 by Orion Home Video. An estimated 7,000 copies were shipped. A book also titled "Slacker" containing the screenplay, interviews, and writing about the film was published by St. Martin's Press, also in 1992. The film was re-released on VHS on March 7, 2000, by MGM. The film was released to DVD worldwide on January 13, 2003.