Y2K Review

 

I saw Y2K, here are my thoughts…

So with my reviews, I try to add some suspense to my overall opinion, but I will be honest… This thing is a mangled mess.

So the movie starts out all right, it is a mix of Mallrats and Superbad, and the guy from Deadpool 2 is entertaining and charming. The dialogue isn’t that great, you can tell they’re trying to be edgy with cuss words and sexual situations, but they’re trying too hard so it just comes off as “try hard”. The plot is very standard, a shy guy trying to tell a girl he is crushing on his feelings about her, but it’s fitting of the types of teen movies that came out when the movie takes place…

But the big issue is this movie is a comedy, and the comedy is not funny. It tries to be funny, I got very few chuckles at most, but the jokes just fall flat for the most part. Also, about 70% of the dialogue is cultural references like everything boils down to “Hey did you see when Bart Simpson and Austin Powers appeared on the MTV music awards hosted by *NSYNC to talk about this new thing called a SpongeBob” type lines, which gets old fast… like yeah, I remember that, you don’t have to keep reminding me every 10 seconds. People today don’t walk around going “Hey Megan Thee Stallion and Reddit am I right?”.

Now, when the robot apocalypse happens, the story makes some choices that I was not a fan of. I can’t say because it’s spoilers but it was reductive and hindered my future enjoyment of the film.

The design for the robots is probably the best thing about the movie and is pretty creative, unfortunately, this movie doesn’t understand how technology works. Literally two minutes after Y2K and we already got little robot soldiers taking people out, and five minutes we got full robot terminators like they sort of explain it and this is a sci-fi movie, but that seems quick for this premise for essentially a virus to build these robotic suits, and 2000’s technology was not that advanced for these like Skynet goals. It could’ve been funny if the robots were trying to take over but they still have to use dial-up so it’s harder for them to function, that could’ve been funny but apparently modems from 1999 are more advanced than what we have now.

I will say there were two deaths in the movie that I thought were pretty funny.

And this movie tries so hard to have these like big emotional moments and character beats, but there’s no setup, and these characters are so one note you have no investment in them, so the payoff is like getting money from Bernie Madoff… there’s nothing there.

The main character is so shy and awkward that it’s hard to get invested in him, like people are dying and he still fumbling like “Oh, I don’t know what to do… do you think I have a chance with my crush?”. Also, these two side characters who I had no investment and they keep doing stuff with, the actors were fine, but with the material I was done before it even began. Rachel Ziegler was OK. The film also keeps introducing characters, too many if I’m being honest, but they never focus on the interesting ones. 

And there’s a cameo towards the end and look I don’t wanna be mean, I enjoy this thing well enough, but they take that joke and run it into the ground so far it reaches China, to a point at the end of it makes no sense. And they tried to explain something, but it did not work.

The AI villain is so annoying, and maybe they’re doing that on purpose because his mind is supposed to be based on the Internet and a lot of dumb stuff is on the Internet, but even then he was very cringe, and I don’t like to use that word but is very fitting.

And the ending tries to have this big message of “be who you are and we should all get along”, and I was rolling my eyes so hard. Like it’s a good message, but it felt so forced, and “forced emotions” are the Achilles heal when it comes to a movie for me.

Also, the robot's security is sh!t, like you’re trying to take over the world and within an hour and a half you’ve taken over a town and have these high-tech technology bases, but the humans keep doing things, and I’m like “no one is going to stop them, you’re just gonna stand there and let this happened”.

Also, the movie keeps going, like the story is done. It’s all wrapped up… but they keep having extra endings and mid-credit scenes and it’s like this did not need to be here. The movies are only 1:31 minutes so maybe they’re trying to meet a certain runtime, but even then you’re just trying to meet a quota instead of telling the story.

Well, I have been rather negative about this movie, I will say I could see this possibly becoming a cult film for people who just like wacky silliness, that might work for some people, but not for me.

I give it one star ⭐️ that’s mostly because of a few performances, the Director had passion for this project, and you tell the machinist had fun creating these Power Ranger villains robot villains