It’s always frustrating to want to believe in a fun premise but not see it deliver on what it has to the fullest. Y2K has the right ideas in mind for something truly great, but the execution is just not quite there. It has plenty of laughs, but former Saturday Night Live cast member Kyle Mooney doesn’t show enough discipline in his writing or directing to fully land this disaster horror comedy. As a result, it’s a film that works in fits and starts, coming alive unexpectedly in the third act but lagging too much during its build to something greater. As an oddball tribute to the late 90s, it comes up a bit too wack.
Set on New Year’s Eve, 1999, two friends, Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison), head to a high school party with all the cliques and popular kids. Eli hopes to get close to his crush, Laura (Rachel Zegler), while Danny just wants to have a fun time, singing along to Sisqo’s “Thong Song” and doing other “cool” things. Once the clock hits midnight, however, things take a turn for the worse, as Y2K becomes a much bigger problem than anyone could have predicted. All the technology suddenly becomes sentient and begins to kill all the humans, with even more nefarious plans coming together from there.
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It’s a ridiculous but amusing idea that I was on board with. Whether it’s Maximum Overdrive or Chopping Mall, Y2K feels like a film that was about to join good company in the realm of “machines turn evil” movies that are also way past holding onto too much logic if there’s a chance for some shockingly violent humor to come into play. Yes, as much as I was having fun with the Superbad-esque opening 20 minutes, the bloody mayhem allowed a new sort of tone to take hold, and it could have ideally played around plenty with it.
Unfortunately, once this horror section of the film gets going, it also quickly shows its lack of a better understanding of how it can best capitalize on what it’s got. Taking influence from directors like Edgar Wright, it seems clear that Y2K wants to have a sentimental side and ensure themes regarding friendship and other emotional elements can compliment the chaos. Sadly, this film plays those cards way too quickly, and the movie feels off-balance as a result. While I never had an issue feeling endeared to the characters, the dramatic urgency of their situation wasn’t strong enough to make the sections in between the bigger set pieces land harder.
This would be less of an issue if the film was funnier, but while plenty of one-liners are tossed around, and Mooney brings enough of his weird sensibilities to mine humor out of a lot of random stuff, this is a 90-minute comedy that really slows down in the middle. I was never bored, but given the limits of a film like this, the movie struggled to sustain itself in ways that showed. When so much of this film’s best comedy arrives in the first 30 minutes, it becomes a shame to not feel those same highs.
That said, late in the movie, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst arrives as a parody of himself, and he is honestly kind of great. It essentially comes down to the jokes Mooney and co-writer Evan Winter added to support the presence of the nu-metal rock star. Still, self-awareness comes through here in the same way that other aspects of Y2K effectively know how to handle. Durst basically acts as a crucial aspect of the film’s motif, not unlike the costume design, soundtrack choices, and other elements that went into the filmmaking.
Given the effort coming from industry vets like cinematographer Bill Pope, it’s a shame there’s not more here. Even the cast only gets so much to do. Sure, the younger stars do enough to stand out, with Zegler showing she’s not too above it all to be in on some of the film’s raunchier humor. At the same time, you sort of hope Tim Heidecker would be given more to do or that the presence of Alicia Silverstone would add up to more than just a couple of mom jokes.
As established, so much of this film is fine without becoming genuinely great that it somewhat nullifies the stuff that really works while highlighting what is being missed, given the premise. Y2K has too much going for it to be written off as an extended comedy sketch. It just needed stronger writing and direction to match that high concept. As a 90s kid, hearing and seeing plenty of things that evoked a period of time was certainly fun, but I still needed more than just the sounds of “Flagpole Sitta.”
Y2K opens in theaters on December 6, 2024.
