Film Review: Y2K (2024): New Rachel Zegler Starrer From A24 is Almost a Complete Wipe-Out
Y2K Review
Y2K (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Kyle Mooney, written by Evan Winter and Kyle Mooney and starring Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennison, Daniel Zolghadri, Lachlan Watson, Fred Durst, Kyle Mooney, Eduardo Franco, Mason Gooding, The Kid Laroi, Lauren Balone, Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, Maureen Sebastian, Miles Robbins, Ellie Ricker, Jacob Moskovitz and Daniel Dale.
Y2K, directed by Kyle Mooney, is nothing short of a disaster. The irony is that the picture actually is a “disaster movie.” When Rachel Zegler signed up for an A24 comedy, eyebrows were raised but the hope remained that the star would emerge from it victorious. Heck, it could have even been a good movie. However, being set 25 years ago, the movie stumbles out of the gate and never takes off, unfortunately. The Y2K “bug” that was proposed in 1999 never really affected me and I’m not sure how much it affected society as a whole but in this new movie, aliens arrive to wreck havoc on a small town as a young guy in high school named Eli (Jaeden Martell) tries to woo the girl of his dreams, Laura (the always watchable Zegler).
The film’s threadbare story line starts out with Eli hanging out and shooting the shit with his overweight but confident best friend, Daniel (Julian Dennison). A funny scene has a sweaty Daniel and his mom, Cheryl (Maureen Sebastian), exercising together. He needs to do it more than she does. The action shifts to a convenience store at one point where some friends of Laura escape with some beers that it looks like they stole from the shop. This film would have worked much, much better if Daniel was trying to hook up with Laura because Dennison is much more charismatic than Eli. Instead, the rather bland character of Eli tries to win over the affections of Laura in a touch-and-go fashion that only works in spurts.
At a party, all hell breaks loose because, I believe, the Y2K bug has affected robots who end up murdering some innocent teenagers. The movie focuses on these said robots but doesn’t really give a compelling reason for their existence. Bill Clinton pops up on television early in the movie as he talks about the dilemma the movie proposes but, in reality, the Y2K bug is something that never really seemed to make an impact on me or anyone I know. Not in the grand scheme of things. While I appreciate that Y2K is about a hypothetical scenario, it didn’t feel grounded in any sort of reality thus the whole concept falls out from under it, long-winded explanations aside.
Alicia Silverstone pops up as Eli’s mom who smokes a blunt at one point but her presence in this “clueless” movie is rather banal as is Tim Heidecker as Eli’s dad. However, I won’t sit here and tell you all the acting is mediocre because that’s not true. Lachlan Watson is absolutely hysterical as a girl named Ash who shouts out, “suck my pu–y” in, perhaps, the film’s most effective moment. Fred Durst plays himself with terrific zest and Kyle Mooney, himself, as a rebel named Garrett is a truly enjoyable character within the movie. He shows up to crack one-liners and eventually loses his arm at one point.
Rachel Zegler gets her moments to shine. A good scene has her and Eli in a situation where an old 90’s song plays on the soundtrack and it’s a romantic moment or two within the picture. The soundtrack is peppered with familiar jams that can perk up the material at times. Zegler has the popular girl role down pat but Martell and her only have minimal chemistry which dampens the impact of some of their supposedly romantic scenes together.
The robots fall flat. There is not a moment where the scenario proposed here works from an action standpoint. The scenes with the robots are boring and make one hope for a return of the Dennison character who is killed off fairly early in the proceedings. A condom that Daniel gives Eli eventually saves the day if you make it all the way to the end.
Y2K sounded good on paper but it never really should have been green-lighted. I was just out of college at the height of the Y2K situation from 1999 and may have enjoyed a movie on the topic a year or two later. But, coming 25 years after a dilemma which I forgot almost immediately after it happened, this film seems like a silly idea. But, Rachel Zegler could be enough to make her fans want to see it. This is probably the least of all the films she’s done though so go at your own risk. By the time Semisonic’s “Closing Time” plays on the soundtrack at the end, you’ll wish closing time was at least half an hour sooner.
Rating: 5/10
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