As with "Slacker," Richard Linklater's first film, his latest low-budget, independent production, "Dazed and Confused," focuses on aimless young people in Austin Texas. Only this time, it's high school teens in 1976.

The film takes place during one 24-hour period — the last day (and night) of school, as juniors become seniors and initiate incoming freshmen, and each of this ensemble spends his or her time asking unanswerable questions, drinking beer and smoking pot.

For a film like this, casting is everything, and the players are quite appealing. The nominal lead is Jason London as Randy "Pink" Floyd, the school's quarterback, who wrestles with whether he should sign the coach's pledge form that says he won't drink or smoke weed during the summer.

Other appealing characters include hapless freshman Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), who is set up as a target for intense hazing when his older sister asks the senior guys to go easy on him; freshman Sabrina (Christin Hinojosa), who is attracted to a nerdy senior; the school's reigning nerd trio (Adam Goldberg, Marissa Ribisi, Anthony Rapp), who philosophize and internalize; and perennial pothead Slater (Rory Cochrane), who offers an off-kilter history lesson about George and Martha Washington.

But the nostalgia is dredged up more by the leftover '60s clothing (chiefly bell-bottoms), the soundtrack's non-stop hard-rock music (from Aerosmith to Alice Cooper) and the tapes on which those songs were played (8-tracks, of course).

Hip, smart and loose, the "Dazed and Confused" ensemble is also much more real than the deadheads we've seen in such Hollywood products as "Wayne's World," the "`Bill & Ted" flicks, "Encino Man" or the more recent "Son-in-Law."

Linklater doesn't have a serious dramatic point to all of this; he seems more interested in carving out a slice of minor history that he knows well. Mostly, he is successful, though the film is so meandering that sometimes it sags a bit too much.

"Dazed and Confused" is rated R for considerable language and pot-smoking, along with some violence.