A 1999 Teen Nostalgia Comedy Turned Computer Zombie Film

Jaeden Martell and Rachel Zegler star in Kyle Mooney’s amusing for some time however in the end listless satirical sci-fi catastrophe comedy.

In what might nearly be a bizarre pop-culture physics phenomenon, folks maintain making youth nostalgia motion pictures that spotlight a specific second, an iconic time interval that everybody who grew up in it remembers with transcendent fondness — but the gap between the second and the film commemorating it retains getting longer and longer. “American Graffiti,” the film that invented the style, was set in 1962 and got here out 11 years later, in 1973. “Dazed and Confused” was set in 1976 and got here out 17 years later, in 1993. “Adventureland” was set in 1987 and got here out 22 years later, in 2009. And now now we have “Y2K,” an end-of-the-millennium high-school occasion film that premiered final night time at SXSW. It’s set on the final day (and the day after) of 1999, and it’s popping out 25 years later. When someone in the end makes a youth nostalgia film set in 2024, it most likely received’t come out till 2054.

I believe the rationale the time between youth nostalgia motion pictures and the intervals wherein they’re set retains getting longer has to do with the escalation of media. Now we have extra of it every decade — extra screens, extra photographs, extra expertise to show on a regular basis life right into a hall-of-mirrors model of itself. (In a humorous manner, “Dazed and Confused,” within the three a long time because it was launched, has develop into a film about how little expertise there was within the ’70s.) We’re now dwelling at a time so drenched within the current that it takes longer and longer for the previous to really feel just like the previous. And “Y2K,” as its title tells you, is ready throughout a second of apocalyptic anxiousness about expertise.    

However it’s also, very a lot, a late-’90s nostalgia film, and for some time the director, former “Saturday Evening Reside” solid member Kyle Mooney, and his screenwriter, Evan Winter, immerse us within the time-machine headiness of that second. The movie opens on the traditional stone-cutter picture of an AOL display, with that dial-up suggestions sound, the primitive e-mail, and a video feed (of Invoice Clinton) coming into view by a short haze of pixels. “Y2K” is swimming in succulent interval references and element. A scuzzy native DVD retailer. A CD mixtape. The Pam and Tommy tape. Abercrombie. White children doing their white model of freestyling. “Reward You” and “Tubthumping.” To not point out the final fading model of that mythic determine, the video-store clerk — on this case a blissed-out druggie with hippie dreads named Garrett, performed by Mooney, whose cracked efficiency, all “Yo!” and “wha-a-a-at?” and stoner grins, is without doubt one of the most successful issues within the film.

For some time, “Y2K” seduces us into pondering that we’re watching a sort of “Dazed in Graffiti Adventureland” for the tip of the millennium. The film begins on New 12 months’s Eve, and the into-the-night occasion plot facilities on two brainy outsiders, in what appears like a deliberate nod to movies from
“Superbad” to “Booksmart.” The central character, Eli, is the sleek, good-looking, and comparatively cool one — it nearly appears like a unusual interval reference that Jaeden Martell, who performs him, seems to be like a lacking Culkin brother. Danny, his buddy since seventh grade, is the mouthy and roly-poly one, and Julian Dennison performs him like an much more kinetic model of Jonah Hill’s Seth in “Superbad” (Hill, the truth is, is without doubt one of the producers right here). These two cling round, making comedian hay out of their whiplash fusion of bravado and self-doubt, after which they get able to go to a New 12 months’s Eve home occasion on the suburban house of a douchebag named “Soccer” Chris (performed by the Australian rapper The Child Laroi).

There’s a mission linked to the occasion. Eli has a crush on Laura (Rachel Zegler), who’s that determine that spans all eras and all nostalgia: the favored lady. Precisely not the kind of individual a child like Eli is meant to have the ability to get with. But eras evolve. Laura isn’t a imply lady with prom-queen desires; that’s the outdated mannequin. Like Eli, she’s into the brand new pc tradition, which is changing into a type of cool. And the 2 have develop into flirtatious buddies. The New 12 months’s Eve occasion presents a novel alternative: the second — particularly, midnight — whenever you may simply be capable of kiss the individual you’re standing subsequent to. Danny is intent on ensuring that Eli finds that second with Laura.

All very trad and, in a manner, very so-what. Mooney, within the first film he has directed (after co-writing and starring in 2017’s “Brigsby Bear”), does a great job of staging the occasion — the drunken hip-hop vibe, the warring niches, the brazenness of the hook-ups and come-ons. We all know we’ve been there earlier than, however are glad sufficient to go on the 1999 model of this journey.

However then the journey stops. Midnight arrives. The Y2K second. The lights exit and shortly flip again on. However one thing has occurred.

“Y2K,” it seems, is not a nostalgic teen-party film. It’s a satirical sci-fi catastrophe comedy wherein all of the fears about Y2K have, the truth is, come true. In that fateful clock-turning second, all of the expertise actually does break down…solely to reassemble itself and are available again to life. “Y2K” seems to be an attack-of-the-machines film. But it’s nonetheless very a lot a period-piece high-school comedy. So how properly do the 2 go collectively?

In my guide, not very properly. Truly, let me refine that. It’s not that the 2 elements of the film don’t go collectively. It’s that the final hour of it, the cheeky dystopian alien-tech horror farce, merely isn’t excellent.

In “Y2K,” the Y2K apocalypse begins off on a observe of slasher grisliness. On the occasion, the machines, following their momentary blackout, return to life as killer devices. We see the children skewered and slaughtered by a microwave, a blender, an influence noticed. For some time I believed we’d entered “Shaun of the Lifeless” territory — and although the blood-spattering shortly settles down, “Y2K” does certainly morph right into a sort of zombie film. On the home, the elements of the home equipment and the chunks of digital wiring forge themselves right into a hulking robotic, with a glitchy pc display as its face, and this lurching Terminator is each a killer and the soul of the brand new machine age. They’re taking up! They usually need to kill us all.

But as soon as Eli, Laura, and two of the opposite children escape, wandering by the woods and the empty streets (the place they observe, from a hill, a cityscape dotted with hearth), the movie descends into that listless anecdotal vibe that drives me nuts in so many zombie motion pictures (the place the undead are the one factor actually alive in them). Out on their very own, the characters are revealed to be not all that a lot enjoyable. The film lags. But Garrett the stoner pops up, and so does Fred Durst, taking part in himself. The previous beastie boy of Limp Bizkit now seems to be like a middle-aged ringleader of the Jan. 6 riot, however when he lastly placed on his iconic purple hat, the SXSW viewers went loopy.

Within the summary, the idea behind “Y2K” may be very 1999. The movie’s massive thought is that this was the second once we all handed by the digital wanting glass, changing into extra like machines ourselves as we plugged into the Web and the computer systems that introduced it to us. And so the movie’s monster machines are projections of ourselves. Or one thing. However there’s one other manner to take a look at “Y2K.” Possibly what the film actually captures about 1999 is that it marked a second key transition — the kicking into excessive gear of the period that by no means met an overwrought fantasy idea it couldn’t milk.