Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Movie Review: ‘Y2K’ Retains Some Old School Fun


Director: Kyle Mooney
Writers: Kyle Mooney, Evan Winter
Stars: Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennison

Synopsis: Two high school nobodies make the decision to crash the last major celebration before the new millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.


It feels weird to see A24, a usually more cerebral-driven studio, release such a gonzo affair like Kyle Mooney’s Y2K, a movie that you will either be in or out within its first ten minutes. If you don’t like Mooney and co-screenwriter Evan Winter’s in-your-face, lowbrow comedy in that timeframe, the chances of you having a good time are minimal. Mooney only dials up the most grating qualities of his film as the story progresses, leading to an inexplicably out-there finale that won’t sit well with anyone, audience members and critics alike. 

Lucky for me, who lives for this type of sensorial affront meant to piss off audiences (but always in a playful manner, such as the work of Quentin Dupieux), I was fully on board with this wild gore-fest that won’t require you to think too much of its setting and plot to have a good time. It’s only when you start thinking about the machinations of its Y2K conspiracy gone real story that things begin to fall apart. 

Yet, it almost doesn’t matter. Mooney has more than one trick up his sleeves to keep us invested in the inert adventures of a pair of losers, Eli and Danny, respectively played by Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison. The two haven’t done something meaningful throughout their high school years, and believe the last day of 1999 is where their transition from adolescence to adulthood (or, in this case, ‘manhood’) truly begins. 

Danny attempts to ‘fit in’ with its gangs by consuming alcohol and secretly smoking weed inside the ‘champagne room’ (Québec audiences would call this area the “Western doors” to anyone old enough to have visited a Superclub Vidéotron) of a video store. He encourages Eli to do the same, but more importantly, muster up the courage to speak to his crush, Laura (Rachel Zegler), before the year turns into a new century. 

Eli can speak to her in one of his AOL chatrooms but predictably freezes once in public. However, when the opportunity to attend the party of the century arises, he and Danny think they have nothing to lose as 2000 approaches. Of course, this is all occurring as more people believe in the Y2K scare, which is even illustrated through a speech delivered by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton in the film’s opening section, where “the federal government is Y2K ready and leading by example.”

Now, for those having experienced the shift from 1999 to 2000 (I was alive, but don’t ask me if I remember), the Y2K scare didn’t happen. But what if it did? This is what Mooney and cinematographer Bill Pope (yes, that Bill Pope. Mooney seems astute enough for ardent cinephiles to understand why he chose him to photograph his film) visualize in this breezy 93-minute affair. Through ingenious practical effects from WETA Workshop, technological objects begin to experience a mind of their own and start violently killing people in more brutal ways than one. 

From there, the craziness of its middling humor gets dialed up and becomes thoroughly entertaining, anchored by solid turns from both Martell and Zegler and a legendary appearance from the director of The Fanatic himself: Limp Bizkit. If I had a nickel every time he appeared in an A24 release this year (with Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow), I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. In any event, he joins the group later down the line and provides much-needed levity that’s both a hat tip to a (now old) generation of youngsters and a fun supporting performance that surprisingly showcases his acting prowess in a way that Schoenburn’s film didn’t. 

It also helps that the violence depicted on screen is mostly played for sick laughs, which got me more than a few times, especially regarding one sequence involving a character, a skateboard, and an improvised rail that was so pitch-perfectly timed I couldn’t stop laughing about it even thirty minutes after it ended. It’s an age-old cautionary tale, but the way in which Mooney stages it feels surprising. It’s a comedy where each character can die at any moment and attachment to the protagonists is thus minimal. That’s, however, by design. Since the situation is so unpredictable, we can’t expect many of its key players to make it out alive, acting as a quasi-riff of sorts on Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s This Is The End. 

However, even Rogen and Goldberg had time to flesh out the central character arcs in their film which made eventual deaths feel more impactful (albeit still keeping that darkly funny tone that makes that movie stand the test of time). Mooney attempts to do it with scenes that slow the pacing down and seem more obligatory than engaging, but they are still fairly effective thanks to game actors wanting to bathe in the film’s madcap presentation. But their performances can only bring its development so far when they (and the filmmaker) are clearly more interested in making Fred Durst jokes and having him sing a (pretty good) cover of George Michael’s Faith

Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s gory. Yes, the humor will not please the more elitist filmgoers out there, and that’s the point. Yet I felt an increasing distance from the protagonists as the movie advanced, almost as if it forgot the inextricable fact that such a production only works if you’re fully invested in the characters and not the madness. At first, we fully lean into how Mooney approaches Eli and Danny’s relationship through a hybrid visual style that deftly blends the ‘new’ ARRI camera techniques by intercutting with shots captured on a scuzzy Handicam. 

It gives the movie a decidedly personal aesthetic, but as the story reaches its Limp Bizkit-driven climax, it also forgets this essential part of Y2K’s filmic identity. And while Mooney ultimately gets the last laugh, one still leaves the theater feeling somewhat satisfied but not entirely fulfilled. It almost seems as if Mooney utilized the Y2K scare to make Limp Bizkit jokes, which are admittedly funny but don’t push this tantalizing subject to its fullest extent. It results in some old-school fun, but with several caveats that won’t posit this movie as A24’s finest hour. 

Still, it’s refreshing to see such a studio make a 180 swing on the aesthetic and filmic impulses they established for the past decade. Here’s hoping that by trusting newer and more exciting voices in film, we’ll get even wilder, off-beat stuff like this one, though maybe with an emphasis on story and character relationships beyond the effervescently versatile talents of Mr. Fred Durst, now in a first-look deal with A24? That would be fun. 

Grade: B

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