Y2K(2024)
dir. Kyle Mooney
On this week’s episode, Mike time-tripped back 25 years and watched an alternate reality where the world ended the way many expected it would when the clocks turned to midnight December 31, 1999. A24’s “Y2K” came out last year and, well, much like the prognostications of a world-ending computer collapse, it went away and hasn’t been much thought about since. Will Mike continue his streak of loving the truly awful cinematic tripe I’ve been sending his way? We’ll soon find out, and after that we’ll list off our bottom five period pieces because, if “Y2K” is anything at all, it’s a period… piece of shit. Once we’re done grousing about historic inaccuracies or just plain terrible flicks set in the past, we’ll play a quick round of Dueling Double Bills – our game of building competing double features to proclaim movie dominance – before Mike reveals what kind of cinematic shit sandwich I’ll have to eat for our next episode. But first, let’s discuss a movie so laced with profane, infantile characters that’d it should have been called “Jay & Silent Bob Die Horrible Robot Death” and roll the trailer for “Y2K.”
Mike, I have to confess, this pick came from a place of pure sadism. I watched this one with my two boys—yes, even my eight-year-old, who’s truly shaping up to be a full-fledged horror-hound like his older brother. And you know what? They thought an end-of-the-world slasher flick sounded like a blast. But within about fifteen minutes, even they were looking at me like, “Dad… are we supposed to be having fun right now?”
Instead of fun, we get a parade of walking, swearing clichés, bopping around to an exhausting onslaught of late-90s needledrops before getting mowed down by what I can only describe as the rejected appliance mascots from a Radio Shack clearance sale. Toasters. CRT monitors. Vacuum cleaners. Apparently, this is how the world ends—not with a bang, but with a dustbuster.
So, Mike, my sincerest hope is that you had a miserable time with this one. But I gotta ask—did it manage to break through your defenses, or did it crash harder than a Windows 98 system update?
This movie doesn’t just forget to care about its characters—it actively seems to want we the viewers to forget about them. Our lead, Eli—played with all the energy of a wet cardboard cutout by Book of Henry‘s own Jaeden Martell—is so bland you could season him with bayou spices and he’d still be as bland as undercooked chicken. And his best friend Danny? Played by Julian Dennison like a human airhorn permanently stuck on full blast. He could’ve been a breath of fresh air, but instead, he’s just a loud, obnoxious shit-stain of a character you pray will be the first to get toaster-murdered.
Even Rachel Zegler, who’s usually great, is stuck playing Laura—the blah romantic interest who’s somehow dating Danny and maybe two other guys at the same time? Who knows. I’m not sure the movie even cared. I certainly didn’t
Y2K notes:
- Y2K (2024) premiered at South by Southwest to tepid reactions, with critics calling it “an overlong SNL sketch stretched past the point of parody” (Variety).
- Rotten Tomatoes: 41% critic score, 49% audience score.
- Metacritic: Mixed to negative, sitting at 45/100.
- Box Office: Modest limited release earnings, making about $3.2 million before being quietly shuffled off to streaming platforms.
- Common Critic Complaints: Thinly drawn characters, humor that leans entirely on cheap nostalgia without any actual punchlines, and a plot that spirals into incoherence by the halfway point.
- Audience Reaction: A loud “meh,” with many pointing out that the 20-minute Disaster Girl meme edit they saw on TikTok was both funnier and made more sense.
Qustions:
- Be honest, Mike—how long into this thing did you realize you were trapped in cinematic hell?
- Would you say Eli is the blandest hero we’ve had in a while, or does he still edge out Vanilla Ice’s Johnny Van Owen or Piper Parabo’s Violet Sanford?
- Did Julian Dennison’s character ever cross the line from “annoying but charming” to just plain “please die already”? Because I sort of rejoiced when he died… until I realized I was stuck with Eli alone now.,
- Was there any point—any single moment—where this movie even attempted to make you care about these characters?
- On a scale of one to “my ears are bleeding,” how painful were those relentless 90’s needledrops?
- If the Y2K apocalypse really had happened, would you rather have faced these ridiculous murder-toasters or just embraced the sweet release of a good old-fashioned nuclear meltdown?
- What the fuck with the Fred Durst star turn in this bad boy? WHY?
- Final question—do you think this movie is bad enough to become a cult classic, or is it destined to rot in a forgotten corner of the streaming algorithm forever?
Bottom Five Period Pieces:
5. Barry Lyndon (1975)
Why does so much of Stanley Kubrick’s ouvre feel like it’s kale? Like it’s something you’re supposed to eat but you don’t really like? Things like A Clockwork Orange, Paths of Glory, 2001, and – especially – Barry Lyndon, feel like they’re loaded with the most important cinematic nutrients and all go down with a forced grin and a nod; mmmm good.
Lyndon is a gorgeous period epic is often cited as one of the most visually stunning films ever made… and also one of the most effective non-prescription sleep aids. Shot almost entirely with natural light and candles using NASA-developed Zeiss lenses, Kubrick literally pushed the technical boundaries of filmmaking to capture the authentic glow of 18th-century interiors. And then he asked audiences to sit through three hours of Ryan O’Neal moping in frilly coats while absolutely nothing happens. Critics at the time were underwhelmed—Pauline Kael famously called it “a coffee-table movie”—and despite four Oscars, it struggled to connect with audiences more interested in characters doing something other than wandering around wistfully in powdered wigs.
O’Neal, a last-minute casting choice after Robert Redford passed, admitted years later that he had no idea what Kubrick was going for and just did as he was told. That about sums up the entire experience.
4. Sherlock Holmes (2009) & Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
Guy Ritchie took Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant but refined detective and turned him into a Victorian-era MMA champion with a side hustle in slow-motion brawling. Starring Robert Downey Jr.—fresh off his Iron Man redemption arc—as a twitchy, action-hero Holmes, and Jude Law as his curiously well-dressed and battle-ready Dr. Watson, these films crammed more shirtless fistfights and explosions into foggy London than Jack the Ripper ever dreamed of.
The first film was a commercial hit, buoyed by RDJ’s undeniable charm and Ritchie’s kinetic style. But by the time Game of Shadows rolled around, the novelty wore off, and audiences started wondering if Sherlock Holmes really needed to be defusing bombs and exchanging slo-mo fisticuffs with Professor Moriarty atop a collapsing castle.
Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies in no way feel like they are set in the mid-to-late 1800’s. The action and sense of humor, combined with Ritchie’s frenetic action pacing make them too rapid-fire in both dialogue – and in terms of cinematic dexterity – to believe that it’s anything but contemporary actors doing cosplay. Does this mean these movies are bad? Nope! They are super fun. But are they Sherlock Holmes movies? No, they are Robert Downey Jr. action movies that winkingly portray modern sensibilities and action set pieces against a Victorian England setting, and while I like them, I cannot in good conscience say they represent their time period one damn bit, especially when it comes to matters like divorce which had Rachel McAdams’s Irene Adler as a serial divorcer instead of merely a mistress of clandestine affairs. The victim in her case is subtlety and ignorance of Victorian norms, but cool, let’s have lots of explosions and sideline Adler in the sequel despite the character’s massive importance in Holmes lore. Apparently, even Victorian-era femme fatales weren’t safe from Ritchie’s “lads first” approach.
3. Wild Wild West (1999)
Fresh off the Men in Black high, Will Smith and MIB director Barry Sonnenfeld were unstoppable. Until they weren’t. Enter Wild Wild West, a loose adaptation of the 1960s TV series The Wild Wild West that mashed together Western tropes, giant steampunk-looking mechanical spiders, and Kevin Kline in drag. Featuring Kenneth Branagh hamming it up as a Confederate amputee villain named Dr. Arliss Loveless (seriously), the film tried to sell audiences on the idea that 1860s America was a futuristic playground of steam-powered nonsense.
It bombed critically and commercially, and to this day, Will Smith cites turning down The Matrix to star in Wild Wild West as the worst decision of his career.
Producer Jon Peters had long wanted to put a giant mechanical spider in Superman Lives (the infamous unmade Tim Burton film starring Nicholas Cage), but when that collapsed, he shoehorned it into this movie instead. Thus, cinema history was made… and then immediately regretted. And if you’re wondering why none of this makes sense, just know the script went through at least five writers, none of whom could apparently agree on whether they were making a Western, a sci-fi spectacle, or a two-hour toy commercial for malfunctioning gadgets.
2. 1941 (1979)
At the height of his powers—Jaws and Close Encounters behind him, Raiders of the Lost Ark just ahead—Steven Spielberg decided to try his hand at comedy. The result? A chaotic, bloated, and painfully unfunny World War II farce that spent $35 million recreating the post-Pearl Harbor panic in Los Angeles and forgot to include actual jokes.
Starring an impressive cast of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, and even Christopher Lee, the film is a case study in excess: sprawling set pieces, endless screaming, and a complete lack of comedic timing. Spielberg himself later admitted, “I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t know it was out of control until I was in the editing room.” (Source: Spielberg: A Retrospective, Richard Schickel).
The film’s climactic Ferris wheel disaster sequence alone reportedly ate up over $1 million of the budget—money that would’ve been better spent on, say, a functioning script. Or perhaps a crash course for Spielberg on the difference between a comedy and a two-hour anxiety attack filmed in widescreen. Even Spielberg’s longtime editor Michael Kahn reportedly struggled to carve anything coherent out of the chaos, proving that not even the best in the business could salvage a $35 million punchline that never lands.
1. Noah (2014)
Darren Aronofsky, the mind behind Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, decided his next tortured protagonist would be… Noah. But instead of quiet introspection or gritty realism, he delivered a film so wildly off the rails it makes Syfy Channel originals look restrained.
Russell Crowe does far more than this movie deserves, but largely ends up glowering through the apocalypse, tormented by environmental guilt and murderous visions, while stone-giant Watchers (yes, rock monsters) stomp around like rejected Lord of the Rings concepts. Anthony Hopkins phones in a performance as Methuselah, who spends his screen time demanding berries (no, really), and Ray Winstone appears as the least convincing ancient warlord since Fred Flintstone. It’s all laughably over-earnest, so goofily, idiotically serious that it’s a stunning miscalculation narratively, dramatically and even visually. It’s a Goddamn mess and Paramount was so worried about the film’s confusing tone and theological controversy that they tested multiple cuts before Aronofsky insisted his version remain. The result? A movie that managed to alienate both religious audiences and art-house cinephiles.’
I’m down with a lot of the themes in the movie – don’t get me wrong – and I was a little giddy about the anti-right Christian themes that Arronofsky laced into the film which decry their blatant hypocrisy when it comes to cherry-picking Biblical law. But damn it, it’s just so weirdly made. The cartoon-like visual effects, and the weirdly stylish costume design – it’s like pauper-chic – give the whole thing less a dream-like vibe and more a post-apocalyptic sci-fi vibe. So I’ll say this, Noah is awash in many things, but more than anything, it’s a flood of half-assed ideas and insanely pretentious drama.