Courtesy A24
SNL alum Kyle Mooney returns in his writer/director’s cap with comedy-horror Y2K, the follow-up to his 2017 film Brigsby Bear and one of the few -nostalgia-heavy projects in recent memory that doesn’t feel like pandering.
The premise is simple: What if the feared Y2K bug—which amounted to nothing, you might recall—had been real, only the fallout was less about computers shutting down and more about them Voltron-ing with any available electronic device to become human-killing robot-like creatures with a shared consciousness? Mooney rounds out the film with a send-up of early-aught teen rom-com tropes and internet-y movie absurdity, both of which make for delightful viewing alongside the series of hilarious touchstones and unexpected ultra-gore.
It star Jaeden Martell leads the cast as Eli, a nerd type whose best bud Danny (played by the inimitably brilliant Hunt for the Wilderpeople star Julian Dennison) thinks that New Year’s Eve 1999 is gonna mean sex for them both. Eli has a huge crush on his classmate Laura (Rachel Zegler, West Side Story) and a penchant for building That 70s Show action figures. When it turns out Laura’s secret nerdliness meshes well with Eli’s, they lead a ragtag group of pseudo-intellectual rappers and Limp Bizkit fans to safety and, ultimately, become heroes.
Champs like Tim Heidecker and Alicia Silverstone round out the cast alongside short but memorable turns from The Kid Laroi as a real asshole soccer jock; Lachlan Watson as the girl with the bro group of friends; Daniel Zolghardi as the humorless so-called street poet; Eduardo Franco as the ciggie-smoking, rollerblading would-be rapper whose rhymes are wack; and Mooney himself as the requisite stoner/white guy with dreads.
The most excellent twist, however, comes in the form of Fred Durst, who plays himself circa 1999-2000 with incredibly funny results. Durst proves surprisingly capable as a performer, and even those who loathed nü metal will find a lot to like about his performance. Its meta-commentary about music snobbery presses all the right buttons and might even have folks rethinking why they hated the genre in the first place. Even so, Heidecker and Silverstone feel tragically under-used, and though Y2K’s deus ex machina ending lampoons the weird glut of cyber-punk/hacker-type movies of the era in which it is based, its peril wraps up too swiftly.
If one were looking hard for a deeper meaning, they might assume Mooney’s jabs at living machines are aimed at the rise of AI, though that feels like a stretch. Instead, consider Y2K for what it really is—a fun and silly film made so people in their 30s and 40s might laugh at a bygone era and the embarrassing cultural moments that arose from within it. In some ways, Y2K feels like the dude version of 2019’s Booksmart or 2013’s This is the End. Mainly, though, it’s fun, and sometimes that’s all a movie needs to be. It also signifies Mooney’s growth as a filmmaker and comedian.
7
+Truly funny; Durst wows
-Never enough Dennison; mid-movie lull
Y2K
Directed by Mooney
With Martell, Dennison, Zegler and Durst
Violet Crown Cinema, Regal, R, 91 min.
