There was a time when I functioned as the pitch-perfect embodiment of the Gen X slacker. Suitably scruffy and more than willing to subsist on a diet of ramen noodles, beer and evenings spent in the company of a rock band, I spent my early collegiate career remaining as inactive as possible.

It's a period of my life that lasted only a few years, although I can quite happily moor myself to a couch and a cold one from time to time. What amazes me is that although I seemingly did very little during that period, there are still stories to be told, stories that don't involve watching Harold and Maude 25 times or rolling out of bed at noon. Although I would not recommend it for any length of time, if at all, living the slacker life embodies a sort of freedom often secretly longed for.

Below is a list of five fine films that celebrate, and denigrate, the slacker lifestyle. Watch with care and when the credits roll, please find the motivation to get up off the couch.

ABOUT A BOY (2002): The heir to a Christmas-song fortune, played with a sharp sense of shallowness by Hugh Grant, discovers that a life lived without purpose might not be as golden as imagined.

RIVER'S EDGE (1986): A genuinely frightening movie, with the underrated (and also deeply frightening, from time to time) Crispin Glover as a young slacker who, after murdering his girlfriend, shows the body to his equally slacker buds. Here's the kicker: Nobody does anything about it. Here's the other kicker: It's based on a true story.

KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995): A story of college grads frightened into a state of inactivity by the specter of adulthood, the dialogue-driven film stars Josh Hamilton as Grover, the smart-but-scared center of a circle of friends. It is much funnier than it sounds on paper, I promise.

UP IN SMOKE (1978): A movie about and beloved by slackers equally is the first cinematic outing by the pot-fueled comedy team of Cheech and Chong. It finds the pair escaping an accidental deportation by driving a van made entirely (and impossibly) out of marijuana over the California-Mexico border. In true slacker fashion, the movie isn't really about anything, instead reveling in its own pleasantly relaxed attitude.

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967): The real star of this animated action movie is not Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, or the menacing tiger that stalks him, but the bear who appoints himself Mowgli's caretaker. A true slacker through and through, Baloo teaches the importance of frequent napping, earnest eating and other hallmarks of the slacker lifestyle. The bare necessities, indeed.

Reach Steven Uhles at (706) 823-3626 or steven.uhles@augustachronicle.com.