Jason Bailey
Kyle Mooney’s Y2K begins on a computer screen, filled with watermarks of its December 31, 1999 setting: a flying toaster screensaver, a mix CD burning, an AOL sign-on, and the web service’s home screen, complete with RealPlayer video of President Clinton assuring the public that the Y2K computer bug has been handled and life will carry on as normal when the clock strikes midnight. It’s the desktop of Eku (Jaeden Martell), a high school junior contemplating how to spend his New Year’s Eve. Ostensibly, that’s the subject of Y2K, but it’s really a film about nostalgia — about how you can throw a bunch of turn-of-the-millennium pop-culture artifacts at the lens, and Gen-Xers will whoop with recognition. (Alicia Silverstone is cast as his mom, a nice touch.)
Mooney and Evan Winters’s screenplay starts as a fairly standard one-crazy-night teen comedy, riffing on Superbad, Can’t Hardly Wait, and the like. Eli and his best friend Danny (Julian Dennison, of Hunt for the Wilderpeople) are high school losers, equipment managers for the girls’ basketball team who spend most of their time playing video games and fantasizing about which classmate they’d like to lose their virginity to. For Eli, the answer, unhesitatingly, is Laura (Rachel Zegler), the popular girl of his dreams. She’ll be at a big house party, as will much of their class, and if there’s ever a time to make a move, it’s midnight on New Years’ Eve. “Maybe it’s the booze talking,” he announces, after approximately one swig out of his parents’ liquor cabinet, “but fuck it, let’s do it.”
In these early scenes, the central relationship and the mission they take on makes Y2K impossible not to compare to Superbad (and it comes up considerably short). The main point of departure, and the main problem with Y2K in general, is that the bullies are right about our protagonist; he actually is a dud, a whiny and unappealing sort, and there’s no real reason to root for him beyond the fact that he’s the main character, which isn’t reason enough.
Luckily for the picture, midnight arrives, and takes the picture into darker, more surreal territory. We’re treated to a dramatization of a worst-case scenario, and then beyond, as the machines of the world join forces and fight back, with unexpectedly grisly results. An alarming percentage of the junior class is hacked, drilled, and microwaved to death in fairly quick order, leaving our small group of survivors to try to figure out what’s happening, and how to stop it. But the primary problem persists — an absolute dullard of a protagonist — augmented by the script’s weird and sudden investment in previously barely-developed side characters. And a little of Mooney’s broad caricature of a dread-locked stoner video store guy goes a very long way.
There’s just kinda not much to Y2K, and the lightness of the enterprise wouldn’t matter all that much if it were funnier. But once the main joke is told, it doesn’t have anywhere to go comedically (aside from a novelty appearance by Fred Durst, which gets old fast). As a fan of the era’s tackier cinema, I appreciate that the AI cybervillain looks like the Lawnmower Man, and the film does confirm, if we needed further confirmation (we didn’t) that Rachel Zegler has got the movie-star goods. She’s selling even the hackiest beats, but the downside of her exuberant work is that it makes Martell’s wet rag of a performance all the more banal. He’s an absolute charisma void, resulting in one of the most unbalanced central relationships of the movie year.
I had occasion to rewatch American Graffiti recently, which anyone making a nostalgia piece set in the recent past should be legally obligated to view. (I’m not kidding; let’s put it on the books.) What’s most striking about the picture is how Lucas refuses to spend his time putting his elbow in your ribs; there’s none of the winking “HEY HEY REMEMBER THIS GOOFY SHIT?!” that pervades pictures like Y2K or Take Me Home Tonight. (I like The Wedding Singer just fine, but it’s to blame for a lot of this.) The impulse to set a coming-of-age tale when you, a filmmmaker or screenwriter, came of age is understandably irresistible. But pop culture shout-outs and dril-style “thinking about shit that i Recognize and smiling” is a poor substitute for character development and rooting-interest relationships.
C-
“Y2K” is in theaters this weekend.
