Grab your puka shells, we’re saving the world homies. Kyle Mooney’s Y2K is a campy, chaotic, and totally unserious disaster flick that will be a blast for those of us who remember the dawn of the 2000s.
Y2K Review
Passive aggressive song lyrics for away messages, Goldeneye 007, Tamagotchi, Chumbawamba… any of that sound familiar? If so, you, like the Winter Soldier, have been activated. I bet you’re remembering what it was like to live during the “big event” that was New Year’s Eve 1999. As a millennial, I was instantly intrigued by Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut, Y2K, while also pausing to reflect on the fact we are now old enough to have a specific part of our childhood turned into a Hollywood “period piece.” It’s hella rude. But also hella comical. So I let go of my chagrin and fully leaned into the chaotic romp Mooney and co-writer Evan Winter set out to take me on.
Y2K is a campy, gory, and totally unserious disaster flick set during the dawn of the millennium. It’s a nostalgia-laden feast for millennials, xennials, and gen x. Mooney and Winter lean fully into the ridiculous premise, that the Y2K bug was in fact real and made all electronics link up like Megazord, delivering something that is over-the-top, hilarious, and doesn’t care if you don’t like its bucket hat and puka shell necklace. If the sheer awesomeness of the sights and sounds aren’t enough to draw you in, the assembled cast is equally entertaining, led by Rachel Zegler, Jaeden Martell, and Julian Dennison.
It’s December 31, 1999. Best friends (and social outcasts), Eli (Martell) and Danny (Dennison) are determined to make their dreams come true– kiss a hot girl. To do that, they plan to go to a party where Eli’s crush, the computer whiz Laura (Zegler), will be along with all the other most popular kids from school. When the clock strikes midnight, everyone cheers, red Solo cups in the air. But before they can return to their partying, every appliance and online device suddenly start slaughtering any human they come in contact with. Eli and his friends quickly try to find a safe place to ride out the Y2K bug before realizing if they want to survive they’re going to have to fight…for their right… to party live.
I feel like I need to explain a little bit about why Y2K was such a big deal for the babies, I mean Gen Z and Alpha. Essentially, the internet was still pretty new. And everyone from random chat room weirdos to your parents, to the world governments all thought that when the computers changed their dates to 2000 it would set-off a massive glitch that would shutdown all technology all over the world. Spoiler alert: nothing happened, like every other doomsday prophecies we have lived through since then. That makes Mooney and Winter’s concept here so amusing while also making us pause to think what we would have done if the family’s tangerine colored iMac started trying to behead us. I would probably have taken my softball bat to it but that wouldn’t make for a great bloody chase scene.
Mooney is a SNL alum and if you have ever seen his work there you know what to expect with Y2K. He’s also clearly a well-versed geek for our millennium culture who knows exactly how to play up the right visual and audio gags and what needle drops are going to get the biggest “OMG I remember this song!” In terms of plot consistency, Y2K feels like an extended sketch comedy for network TV while also giving the homemade vibe of something you recorded with your friends. This is all boosted by the glorious practical effects that I’m convinced all moviegoers of a certain age have an affinity for. Wētā Workshop has created some pretty stellar wired monsters for our protagonists to do battle against. It should be frightening… I guess, but it’s not. Everything is so insane you can’t help but laugh even when someone gets their head drilled into by a rogue Tamagotchi-RC car combo unit. Outside of that Mooney also understands the importance of an over-the-top computer hacking sequence, because of course there is in the year 2000.
Martell, Zegler, and Dennison roll with all the punches (and stabs) managing to keep up with the breakneck speed at which the jokes fly as well as balancing some actual sincerity amongst the silly. Martell is the strait-laced nerd who is going to be forced out of his shell to save the girl and the world. Dennison is his over-confident, jokester of a best friend who gets to go full-on Sisqo in his own performances of “The Thong Song.” Zegler is charming and tough as the “cool girl” love interest. Rounding out the main cast is Mooney himself as the dreadlock rocking stoner video store employee Garrett, Ash (Lachlan Watson) the Limp Bizkit super fan, Farkas (Eduardo Franco ) the skater boi, CJ (Daniel Zolghadri) the anti-conformist, and Fred Durst as himself because it’s Fred Durst.
Verdict
Ultimately, Y2K is a love letter to millennials, xennials, and gen x first and an end-of-the-world disaster flick second. Mooney and Winter take us back to a time when everything seemed simpler and way cooler than anything happening now. A time when our biggest concern was trying to download a song on Limewire before mom picked up the phone and ruined the connection. With everything going on Y2K is completely unserious and that’s the way it should be. It’s a hilarious, blood-soaked, and packed with all the crazy things we loved in the late 90s early 00s. My only complaint? I wanted a full-one montage set to “Break Stuff.” Oh well, there could always be a sequel right?
Y2K opens in theaters December 6, 2024. It is rated R for bloody violence, strong sexual content/nudity, pervasive language, and teen drug and alcohol use with a runtime of 1 hour 33 minutes.
