Educational institutions are supposed to expose students to a wealth of ideas not readily available elsewhere – well, maybe they’re available somewhere else, but it might just be esoteric stuff hidden from plain sight. Whatever the case, it seems that most folks who pursue education post bachelor’s degree are disappointed in some way. It might be a weirdo clutch of faculty members who aren’t quite together themselves – or it might be lackluster facilities, or even a lackluster cohort. Whatever the case, there’re endless famous filmmakers and otherwise relatively respected folks who ditched their educational goals to go it alone.

By 1980, Jim Jarmusch had already been in New York for almost a decade. He’d attended school after fleeing Akron, but there wasn’t any substantial filmic work to show for his move. So, the would-be cool filmmaker quit the film program he was in and endeavored to cobble together his first feature. Permanent Vacation is all that Jarmusch fans would imagine. But it’s also stuck in an upiddy cool ghetto attempting to levy as many off handed slacker moments as possible while still working to be consciously intelligent. And that’s a problem.

Jarmusch, though, has always been the laid back representative of early ‘80’s NYC cool. It’s as if he’s become the Thurston Moore of film. People reference his work as the hallmark of a movement, one that’s supposedly influenced a crop of creative minds subsequent to his arrival on the scene. It all begins here. And while Permanent Vacation was completed after the director left school, the feature still reeks of student-film pomposity.

There’s definitely a narrative as opposed to the main character, Allie, just wondering around town – kinda. The series of events that leads to film's conclusion are all sequentially ordered as to result in some sort of arc. There’s just no climax, which makes wading through the hour and ten minutes a pretty dull endeavor.

Along the way, viewers watch the film’s protagonist dance in his apartment to a record he tosses on while his assumed girlfriend just sits around smoking cigarettes. It presages some of the early scenes from Stranger than Paradise in which the two cousins are seemingly stranded in Lurie’s character’s apartment, staring at nothing, smoking cigarettes.

Unfortunately, the static scenes don’t do too much for viewers. It’s pretty easy to understand that Allie’s intentioned to be the summation of cool. There’re a few long tracking shots, which aren't utilized in Jarmusch’s next film, but function here to create some semblance of action where there actually is none. Regardless of that, the only portion of the film that hints at real visual stimulation is when the film’s main character encounters a woman yelling in Spanish while sitting on a stoop.

There’s no explanation as to why Allie finds this woman so enticing – she is scantily clad, though. But he soon just walks away towards the final scene of the feature. Encountering some French guy, Allie, now wearing a neckerchief, discusses leaving town and in a final voice over declares that nothings been accomplished in his roving. He’s right, but at least the movie ends.