Y2K conveniently mixes a bad teen comedy with a bad apocalypse horror and winds up with a mediocre movie. Surprise surprise. It’s also a combo of a TON of other movies all smashed into a nostalgic blender so it’s got a touch of fun that even broke through my cynical shell.

It’s new year’s eve 1999 where a bunch of teen partiers are only a little worried about Y2K but a lot worried about the opposite sex. But when midnight hits and the power goes out, the robots rise up in revenge.

Yeah, neither the comedy nor the sci-fi/horror worked very well for me. But I do credit the instinct… it’s like if the party in 1998’s Can’t Hardly Wait got hit with the mashup robotics in 1999’s Virus. Or The Terminator showed up to ruin the good time of The Breakfast Club.

It’s also like the apocalypse scenario in the celeb-heavy This is the End or the machine apocalypse from Maximum Overdrive. Who Made Who, indeed. But it’s also Max Headroom meets The Lawnmower Man meets Hackers. I love that writer/director Kyle Mooney threw everything he watched as a young person into a blender.

I just wish it was better. I was so unamused by just about everything. The only thing that kind of worked was the cheesy 90s era vision of computer hacking. I kind of dug that plus the Lawnmower Man as stoner dude bro.

The cast is good though, but not as fun or funny as they should be. The lead is Jaeden Martell who I’d actually like to see in more movies. And Rachel Ziegler who is appealing but feels out of place as a love interest. And Kiwi phenom Julian Dennison as the best friend. Fred Durst too… and I loved the instinct to sneer at him but ultimately the film takes him too seriously. And a little too TOO seriously which means they go all the way back around to making fun of him again. Hmmm… it made me want to break stuff, I guess.

I’ts sadly also only generically about Y2K… which makes it a missed opportunity. I wanted something that reflected actual Y2K paranoia. A robot uprising wasn’t even on the table back in the day. In fact, the movie would actually make more sense now given our hyper-connected technology and AI paranoia.

I probably shouldn’t worry so much about the accuracy of a silly horror comedy like this but that’s where my sci-fi brain went. Bad brain! Bad! But that’s where I land… an underwhelming and unamused feeling of a huge missed opportunity. But with some bright spots. It’s a cool idea mishandled.

Score: 74