As if on cue, there is a new sub-genre within the genre of youth … nostalgic movies coming of age movies that fixate on some moment or a specific iconic period that those who have lived it seem to be somehow almost dreamlike romanticized over but the gap between the films and the period they portray keeps increasing. The so-called ‘American Graffiti’ upon whose format this brand new genre can be said to be constructed was based in the year 1962 only to be released 11 years later in the year 1973. “Dazed and confused” now based in the mid 1970 was some seventeen years later brought to the audience in the year 1993. “Adventureland” was finished in the year twenty and seven only to be watched twenty two years later in 2009. In its latest emergence, The Y2K movie had its world premiere at SXSW last night. set on New Year’s Eve 1999, with the audience getting it 25 years later. Considering this pattern, chances are that a movie regarding youth nostalgia set somewhere closer to the present day, in the year 2024 may only see the light of day in the year 2054.
I believe the constant increase of the media with new innovations has made it so that people don’t have the desire to make a movie or a show that is nostalgic of the era they are set in which is why there is a higher amount of time in between them. Just like every decade there is a lot of change to the world, and change to the amount of technology on offer. Which in many ways is funny as now “Dazed and Confused” has become a movie about lifestyles without technology in a world where Wifi was unheard of. Because of where we stand in the cultivation of thoughts and memories, the past sets itself further away the more the present moves on which is the reason why most E-Nostalgists currently regard the 90’s era as the tech compared to the current world.
We all know what this means and accept it there is one fact in particular that makes ‘Y2K’ even better: it’s also a qualified late-‘90s nostalgia film, and for the first half of the picture my husband Saturday Night Live alumni Kyle Mooney and the co author of the screenplay Evan Winter remind us of the new fresh exploded period of the 90s. Shortly thereafter, the viewer sees a video of Bill Clinton, accompanied by the characteristic “noise” of connecting to the Internet through Aol, primitive brianstones, and still-weird video communication technologies from the other side of the screen.
“Y2K” is thick with historical background and details on things that are of the period. Such as a worn-out local DVD rental shop. How about using a CD mixtape? Or the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape? About Abercrombie… White guys trying to freestyle because they’re white. Hello “Praise You” and “Tubthumping.” Last but certainly not least, there is the last dying incarnation of the legendary video store clerk in this instance a spaced out dopehead with dreads, the lesbian Garrett in Mooney’s depiction, whose oh so cracked lines “I am a stoner” expressions are a hilarious highlight of the film.
For some time now, ‘Y2K’ draws us in, making us believe that we are watching some sort of Graffiti Adventureland: Dazed towards the millennial end times. The action begins on the eve of New Year’s day, then the plot involving partying into the night centers on two nerds, which somewhat feels like an intentional referencing of “supperbad” to “Booksmart” movies. In fact, Llewellyn’s co-stars Eli’s a handsome, charming, relatively calm character jaeden martell who is cast in the role, almost looks like a missing brother from a family of culkins. His friend, Danny, is loud and portly and was introduced to the screen as the embodiment of Julian Dennison Danny indeed looked like a hyperactive version of Seth from “Superbad.” These two clown in the middle of sorry prop-decorated scenes, and self-doubt which makes them comical rather than sympathetic, excusing their derogatorily self-style before heading to a New Year’s Eve party at ‘soccer’ Chris (The Australian singer-the Kid Laroi has played this role).
So a mission goes along with the party. Eli, for example, is in love with Laura (Rachel Zegler) this is the vernal ideal, who got everything: she is hot, the sweet popular girl. Definitely not a catch for a loser like Eli. But times change. Laura is not a mean girl with unrealistic dreams to become prom queen; that is the old narrative. Like Eli, she is also a geek into the new computer culture which is fast emerging as the new cool. And they became more than just friends and started flirting. The idea behind the New Year’s Eve party is interesting: it is the only time when one can get away with kissing someone because, it is the tradition for many to kiss at midnight. Danny will be fighting for Eli to find just that moment with Laura.
All very trad and in a way, very so what. Mooney, for the first time in the movie with writing, co-writing (and starring in 2017 “Brigsby Bear”), knows how to make a party drunken hip hop, bickering subcultures, indiscreet sex and shameless flirting. Sure we have been there, done that, but what we all would like to do is take this 1999 version for a spin.
And so the ride comes to an end. Midnight hits. The moment of Y2K. The screen went black and almost instantly, the lights came back on. But a shift in time and space has occurred.
It turns out, Y2K, is not your run-of-the-mill flick of teenagers partying. It’s a comedic sci-fi disaster movie that has one satirical message: all the Y2K fears have been validated. When that life altering time hits, all the technology does get destroyed…but gets put back together and goes back to work. As it turns out, “Y2K” is a robot apocalypse movie. But it is also very much a high school comedy of that particular time. So how closely do the two fit together?
In my view, not very well. Well, let me revise that. It’s not that the two parts of the movie do not correlate with each other. It’s just that the last hour of the film, that is the smart socio-technological horror comedy sham, simply is not that good.
In “Y2K,” Y2K apocalypse presents itself, in the very beginning, as a slasher. At the bash, the machines after a temporary blackout suddenly come alive and go on a murderous rampage. The children are seen being impaled and butchered by a microwave, a blender, and a power saw. For a moment, I thought we have crossed into all the area of the “Shaun of the Dead” type. And yes, although the blood-soaked scenes die down quickly, “Y2K” is indeed interspersed with motiffs of a zombie movie. In the house, the limbs of the appliances and the pieces of datalines integrate into a massive figure resembling a weird computer with a cracked display, and this rough wounded cyborg is both a mass murderer and the spirit of the new age. They are coming! And they mean to exterminate us all.
When Eli, Laura, and two other youngsters break free and roam the woods and desolate roads once more (with a view of the burning city below from a high altitude), the film sinks into the aimless narrative backtrack typical of so many zombie films that I have seen where the undead in fact more than anything else seem to be the only thing writhing in a fit of comical life. The characters, however, were left to fend for themselves. The film stagnates. Out of the blues, however, Garrett the stoner comes into the picture and Fred Durst playing himself does as well. Limp Bizkit’s former beastie boy has now transformed into a grey wizened embodiment of things gone astray from the January 6 th coup but when he slid into place his ubiquitous red hat the South by Southwest crowd lost it.
The year 2000 was unlike any other and the notion of “Y2K” seems incredibly 1999. The film truly explores the idea that this was the moment when we all plugged into the internet and became more machinelike. And in this sense, the monsters of the film are just machines that are simply an extension of ourselves. Or something like that. However, “Y2K” could also be interpreted in an entirely different sense. Perhaps what the movie depicts about 1999 is that it was the second significant transition, the shift into the domination of an era that never ran out of grandiloquent ideas to exploit.
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