Well, people. It is with deep regret to inform all of you that we have reached the end of Kyle Mooney’s appeal as an auteur. I have supported and loved this man with my whole being for so many years, but I’m sad to report that Kyle’s whole modus operandi of nostalgic, kitschy, awkward comedy has collapsed in on itself.
This was The Avengers: Endgame for people obsessed with the 90s. I do credit Kyle for creating a new type of fan service for people who want to point at the screen and giggle every time they hear the dial-up internet sound. Unfortunately, this target audience is a party of one: Kyle Mooney himself. His fondness for the 90s was plastered all over the screen, something that has previously worked in short-form SNL sketches and, perhaps, Saturday Morning All Star Hits! However, this film felt like a narrative was written as an excuse for Kyle to think of as many 90s references as possible to include in a project—complete self-indulgence from a director and artist. While it has so much marketability in that vein, the end product was beyond half-baked. When we look at other projects from the Moon-Man, we can see a prevailing theme of 90s nostalgia, but that nostalgia complimented a strong, well-crafted narrative. Brigsby Bear used elements of 90s culture to help progress a meaningful, multi-dimensional narrative, where Y2K used elements of 90s culture for vanity’s sake. Was this entertaining and sometimes funny? Sure. But was it something I’d recommend to someone fond of Kyle Mooney and his art? Viewer beware: it might ruin him for you.
The film takes no time getting right into worldbuilding, with AOL message sequences spearheading the film as a flurry of “You Got Mail” sounds emanate from our protagonist Eli’s (Jaeden Martell) brick of a computer. Like any 90s coming-of-age film, our angsty, teenaged main character is late for school, quickly throwing his personal items into a backpack with fitting 90s rap rock blasting in the background. As Eli sits with his parents in the kitchen, we quickly learn of the driving plot of the film: Eli is trying to kiss his crush Laura (Rachel Zegler) at midnight of New Year’s Eve. Not only is this theme prevalent in just about every 90s high school comedy, but Kyle Mooney winks at the audience by making Alicia Silverstone (Cher from Clueless) play Eli’s mom. Right off the bat, the 90s fan service comes in too hot. In fact, the first 30 minutes of the film is only fan service. We get sweeping shots of the town, including the high school with a bunch of broadband internet service trucks parked outside. It’s important to set the scene for any film, but these nostalgic kernels are foregrounded too prominently. What is meant to subtly immerse the viewer into the cinematic world actually took me out of the film almost immediately. It got old after the first couple minutes but was stretched out until the New Year’s party that ostensibly everyone in the school goes to: except, of course, Kyle Mooney’s stoner, no-clue-what-age-he-is, mentor-to-all-the-16-year-olds, owns-and-operates-a-video-store-with-a-backroom-porn-collection character, who we all could have guessed Kyle would be playing.
The movie picks up pace at Soccer Chris’ (The Kid LAROI) New Year’s party. It is here that I realized the film is stuck in a weird, unfulfilling middle ground of not quite spoof, not quite original story. The party begins with quick cuts to each of the stereotypical 90s high school cliques. It felt like an SNL skit, but the 1 hour and 31-minute run time brings the comedic momentum to a grinding halt. After midnight, however, the laughs started to come with hilarious deaths. It turns out the Y2K rumors come true, as all of the electronic devices become sentient and start murdering and capturing every person in town. Stereo systems launch CDs at the heads of people, microwaves completely bake a high schooler’s body. Perhaps the funniest death is the main antagonist’s, as he can’t help but hit a sick grind on a fallen down basketball hoop without falling and dying instantly upon his head’s impact with the concrete. It also included a great comedic beat in a passing-of-the-condom moment between Eli and his best friend Danny (Julian Dennison), who dies an untimely, gruesome death by sentient washing machine, or whatever that Frankensteinian electronic creature was.
While this 15-minute, gory death sequence offered some great laughs, it killed off two of the most compelling characters: Danny and the main antagonist Farkas (Eduardo Franko). The action of this scene and the momentum it built stopped abruptly, as a 20-minute, poorly lit scene of walking through the woods immediately followed. Of this surviving foursome, Eli and Laura were the only two worth caring about, as the other two, up to this point, had little to no screen time. It was an interesting directorial choice to keep two characters with the least promising arcs alive and kill two of the more compelling ones directly prior.
Nevertheless, the story continues as expected—this ragtag bunch overcomes their differences and works together to destroy the hive mind controlling all the electronics of the world. In Kyle’s and the film’s defense, there are indeed so many scenes that prove the film is undoubtedly aware of its corniness (phew!). But does an asshole aware of his meanness make him any less mean? No. This brings me back to my previous point about the film being stuck in a weird middle ground. It was not a spoof like Not Another Teen Movie, and it wasn’t unique enough to be interesting and compelling. Kyle should have leaned more into one of those choices to avoid creating a film that was so clearly unsure of itself, leading it to be received as corny and trite. The fan service knows that it’s fan service, which is a relief, but it should be less on the nose, and the story could have been way less reliant on the fan service. All that to say, it needed to find a better balance between 90s references and meaningful storytelling. Mooney has had no issue in the past finding that happy medium, so what happened with Y2K?
Despite being a marketing team’s joy, Y2K left me feeling empty: not because the movie was not really good (I’ve seen bad movies before), but because it made me realize that Kyle Mooney might have lost touch with his audience. He tried to make something that he would enjoy, which I’m sure he did, but he did so at the audience’s expense. At the very least, the closing credits were edited so well and were a delight to watch.
