Weekend Watch - Y2K
On some level this is a smart film, but on all other levels, it’s incredibly dumb, but don’t let that stop you from seeing it, as it’s still one of the funniest new films I’ve watched this year.
Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is the late 90s, early 2000s nostalgia-fueled teen horror comedy from SNL alum Kyle Mooney and production studio A24, Y2K. The disaster movie about what could have happened if the machine apocalypse really was triggered by the turnover from 1999 to 2000 stars Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennison, Daniel Zolghadri, Lachlan Watson, Fred Durst, Kyle Mooney, Eduardo Franco, Mason Gooding, and The Kid Laroi. The film opened in theaters this weekend to middling reviews from both audiences and critics. Let’s get into it.
Letter Grade: D+; giving this film any rating higher than this would feel wrong, but it does some things really well, depending on your take on it.
Should you Watch This Film? Obviously not, right? Unless… there’s some moments in this film that are truly some of the funniest moments this year (often unintentionally). It’s not good, but it might be fun enough to warrant a watch.
Why?
Y2K on paper is a film full of clunky dialogue, odd skips in scenes, a marked lack of internal logic for its premise, and an aggressive amount of homages to the cringeyest parts of late 90s and early 2000s culture. If you’re watching it as a conventional high school horror comedy, you’re going to be frustrated with the seeming randomness of the way that story beats unfold – the story is the loosest skeleton, relying almost entirely on convenient plot points to move from scene to scene and moment to moment – and the horror never really hits beyond some moments of gore and some solid practical effects for a B-movie. However, by the end of the film, I was able to appreciate what the film was doing because it becomes readily apparent that the film and actors are in on the joke. No one in this film, by the time it made it to the big screen at least, seems to be seeking to make something “good”. Rather, the film feels like one big troll and/or parody of the 90s and 2000s nostalgia that has been seeing a resurgence in the last year or so. The first twenty minutes of film will hit like crack for people looking for those old references within a high school comedy, and it’s probably objectively the best part of the film; however, once things start spinning out of control, the film leans into the odder parts of 2000s culture – coding, niche rap, Limp Bizkit – and you start to realize that you can either lean into the jokes and laugh at the fact that people once lived like this or sit back and get mad that the film isn’t behaving at all like a typical high school, horror, or nostalgia film. On some level this is a smart film, but on all other levels, it’s incredibly dumb, but don’t let that stop you from seeing it, as it’s still one of the funniest new films I’ve watched this year. I don’t know that everyone should see this film, and I don’t know that it really was as intentionally constructed as I’m giving it credit for. What I do know is that my wife and I both laughed a lot while agreeing that it's a very dumb movie. Check it out in theaters if you want to, or don’t. It’s up to you.
Weekend Watch - Bottoms
Bottoms is a refreshingly original take on the high school comedy genre, bolstered even higher by some solid comedic performances, excellent humor, and a story that never feels tired and never loses its pacing, making this one of the must-see films of 2023.
Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating and review. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Bottoms, the high school comedy from Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, starring Sennott alongside Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, and Marshawn Lynch. The film follows lesbian best friends (Sennott and Edebiri) as they start a fight club to try to hook up with their crushes. It opened last weekend to wide acclaim (critical and fan-based) and jumped immediately onto Letterboxd’s list of the top-rated 250 narrative feature films on their site. Let’s get into it.
Letter Grade: A; this is legitimately the most laugh-out-loud funny film I’ve seen in theaters in a long time, and with the addition of some solid performances and writing in between jokes, it’s an excellent film.
Review:
Bottoms puts together a perfect blend of quirkiness, heart, high school hijinks, and pure comedy to insert itself into the conversation for the best modern teen comedy. The comedic performances from Edebiri, Sennott, and Lynch stand out from the crowd with perfect timing, playing excellently off each other in what ends up being a brilliantly paced, quick hitting high school comedy. Sennott and Seligman put together a fun premise with memorable characters and goofy situations that feels unquestionably original and fresh, aggressively self-aware and thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.
Ayo Edebiri is in the midst of a huge come-up right now, with voice performances in the Ninja Turtles and Spider-Verse films that came out this summer, an Emmy nomination for her performance in The Bear, and now the co-lead in one of the most popular comedies of the year so far. Her turn here as Josie is probably the most complex character, and she plays the awkward but driven young woman charmingly. Rachel Sennott follows up her critically acclaimed 2020 partnership with Seligman in Shiva Baby with yet another mildly unhinged, uproariously funny turn as PJ, the ringleader of the impromptu girls’ fight club. Marshawn Lynch is the not-too-surprising stand-out of the supporting characters, playing the girls’ history teacher, Mr. G, arguably the film’s funniest character, holding his own in the film across from these two incredibly talented actresses, even outshining them in some scenes.
While I am very aware that I am not Seligman and Sennott’s target audience as a straight white guy, I still found their film to be highly enjoyable and never unapproachable in its humor or storyline. The caricaturized version of high schoolers that they present in the cheerleaders, football players, outsiders, and nerds makes for a quality satire of the high school experience, specifically for girls, but one that is easily recognizable for anyone who’s been to an American high school in at least the last twenty years. The story of girls with crushes looking for love is nothing new, but its execution with the comedy, situations, and ultimate over-the-top climax that brings it all together is on a level of originality that you just rarely see in your mainstream modern comedies.
Bottoms is a refreshingly original take on the high school comedy genre, bolstered even higher by some solid comedic performances, excellent humor, and a story that never feels tired and never loses its pacing, making this one of the must-see films of 2023. Seligman, Sennott, and Edebiri represent a talented group of rising stars in modern Hollywood, and I’m excited for them to have this film under their belt as a classic comedy to look back on as their success continues to climb. Marshawn Lynch might be the most unironically funny athlete-turned-actor to date, and he gets to put that on full display here; I look forward to seeing even more of that. The originality and representation in Bottoms also goes a long way in moving the film industry in a positive direction as well. All-around, this film represents a huge step in the right direction for the American film industry, and I’m glad that it exists and that I got to see it this weekend.