What if Y2K had turned out differently? That’s the premise of Kyle Mooney’s disaster comedy horror hitting the 2024 movie calendar on December 6. Appropriately titled Y2K, the upcoming A24 film will see two friends crash a high school party, only to have disaster strike when the clocks flip over from December 31, 1999, to those dreaded double zeros. With ‘90s icons like Fred Durst and Alicia Silverstone amongst the cast, it sounds like Xennials should brace themselves for a nostalgia bomb, as the trailer gives vibes of Superbad meets Maximum Overdrive. But is it any good? Let’s see what critics are saying.
With Y2K now in theaters, moviegoers will follow Jaeden Martell as Eli and Julian Dennison as Danny, ostracized best friends who decide to attend the huge New Year’s Eve party they weren’t invited to. Rachel Zegler plays Eli’s crush Laura, and writer/director Kyle Mooney excels both in front of and behind the camera, according to our CinemaBlend review for Y2K. Nick Venable delights in being the target audience for this movie, rating it 4 out of 5 stars and praising the way it maintains its balance of comedy and horror throughout rather than front-loading the laughs. In his words:
Y2K no doubt works best for viewers like me whose lives ran somewhat parallel to the film’s characters, but is universal enough to still earn laughs and wide-eyed shock from audiences who were teenagers long before or long after its 1999 setting. It’s not as if the entire decade hasn’t already been relived and dissected many times over in the internet age. But nothing makes me want to actually go back in time to that point like Y2K does, even if it’s only for 15 minutes or so until [insert overplayed ’90s jam here] reminds me why Spotify playlists are so much more functional than mix CDs.
JoBlo’s Tyler Nichols rates it a “Good” 7 out of 10. This critic is also a millennial who’s here for the nostalgia. If that’s not you, he warns, this may not be the ticket to buy. In fact, the critic questions how many of the references and smaller jokes might fly over the heads of younger audiences. Does Gen Z know or care who Tipper Gore is? Nichols says:
Mooney and co-writer Evan Winter provide a pretty fun story about an unexpected group of misfits banded together to take on the machines that want to end humanity after the clock strikes midnight. There are times when the film pokes fun at the silliness of the premise but still does a good job of keeping certain elements grounded. There’s always going to be some suspension of disbelief that’s required for any film like this. If you’re able to have fun with it, you’ll be rewarded with some genuinely great characters and touching moments between all the chaos.
Not all the critics have the same fondness for Y2K as the above two. Nick Schager of Daily Beast, for instance, says the 1999 New Year’s Eve event might not have been a disaster, but this movie sure is. The movie fails to deliver any witty twists, instead falling back on tired jokes about teens watching porn on computers. Schager continues:
Saturday Night Live alum Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut strives to derive some laughs from melding two distinct genres—the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll teen coming-of-age movie and the apocalyptic science-fiction epic—and comes up with simply wan gags and watered-down nostalgia. Even those who lived through this brief bout of techno-anxiety will find it as tedious and strident as the screeching sounds of a dial-up modem connecting to the nascent internet.
Brianna Zigler of AV Club gives the film a C-, saying Kyle Mooney’s funnier instincts are replaced by weak jokes, weak story and weak characters. The 25-year age gap between now and the real-life non-event it depicts makes Y2K feel more outdated than nostalgic. Zigler says:
In handling this idea, Mooney doesn’t know where to draw the line between satire and sentimentality. Y2K is so gratuitously laden with a candy trail of obvious period references that its completely earnest tone is all the more bewildering. … In Y2K, lackadaisical gags about dial-up noises, AIM chats, and rap rock are mostly supposed to be funny because they’re old, and because those who grew up around such things will gleefully recognize them. It’s banking on this carrying the film in lieu of enjoyable jokes or characters.
Audrey Fox of Looper describes the movie’s ‘90s vibes as “immaculate,” and loves the soundtrack, but even all that nostalgia can’t save this movie’s actively terrible dialogue and paper-thin plot. Fox rates it 4 out of 10, writing:
It devotes all of its energy to recreating the atmosphere of the late ’90s, and it mostly succeeds — it’s just a shame that it does so at the expense of, well, everything else in the film. While its nods to the ’90s are all painfully accurate, it seems like Mooney was so focused on capturing the essence of Y2K that he forgot that all of this needs to be in the service of a story that’s actually engaging. Sorry to all involved, but 91 minutes has never felt so long.
Y2K seems to be targeted toward a very specific audience, which totally works for some critics, but not at all for others. The movie holds a 48% Rotten Tomatoes score, suggesting critics overall are as divided as those above. If you feel like this movie speaks to you — and especially if you ever had a Three Dollar Bill, Y’all CD tucked into the sleeve on your car’s sun visor, Y2K is in theaters now.