RETRO REVIEW: Y2K The Movie (1999)
Come for the review, stay for the late-90s commercials...
The year is drawing to a close and that means it’s time for New Year celebrations around the world, but this isn’t just any New Year. As December winds down we find ourselves on the edge of the 25th anniversary of one of the most notable events of the late 20th century. It was an event that led to fear and anxiety for some, irritation and apathy from others. Of course, we’re talking about Y2K.
When it comes to the Y2K event, there is a lot to talk about, and much more that has likely been lost to time. However, this article is not the place for that. This is a Retro Review, and today we will be reviewing the cultural milestone that was Y2K: The Movie! No, not the 2024 teen horror-comedy directed by Kyle Mooney starring Rachel Zegler and Fred Durst (yeah, that Fred Durst). We’re talking about the 1999 Dick Lowry made-for-TV movie starring Ken Olin and Kate Vernon! So grab some popcorn and strap yourselves in, because this movie was a nostalgia-filled thriller from the late 90s… make your own inference there.
SPOILER WARNING
While it should go without saying, this review will contain heavy spoilers, so if any of you are desperate to have the authentic experience, as God intended, you should go watch the movie first. The link below will take you to a digitized VHS recording — complete with the original commercial breaks. It really is a neat little time capsule and I’m sure whoever recorded it never thought it would be featured on some random Substack a quarter of a century later…
Background
Y2K: The Movie originally aired on November 21, 1999 on NBC with a TV-14 rating. To my knowledge, it never aired again, so unless you were intentional to watch it live, you’ve likely never seen it, or even heard of it. The film was made as a result of the Y2K hysteria of the late 20th century; a time when the average person knew very little about computer systems and how the “Y2K Bug” would effect our world.
Would it cause mass power outages? Would airplane computers fail causing them to plummet from the sky? Would municipal water systems go down? Would the world plunge into a state of total anarchy as governments collapsed? Would your stock of Y2K survival food and water be enough to see you through until civilization could recover? Was it, actually, the Biblical end of days? It sounds extreme — and it was — but for many these were the thoughts they had after months of media hype and speculation about a technology that they barely had a grasp on that had seemed to take over nearly every aspect of our world; and so, in the tradition of capitalizing on our people’s fear of the unknown, we got this little gem of late ‘90s entertainment.
Story
The story focuses on the Cromwell family in two main storylines. Nick, the main protagonist, is a “Y2K troubleshooter” called in to help the feds prepare for the century date change. Throughout the film Nick travels from the eastern US to the west coast trying to avert several disasters including a plane crash and the meltdown of a nuclear reactor.
The secondary story follows Nick’s wife, Alix, and his daughter Kelly (as well as his son Donny and his father Ben to a lesser extent). Alix and Kelly have a difficult relationship. Kelly is a 16-year-old rebellious teenager, eager to assert her independence in spite of the rules her parents have put in place. The first act of the story does a good job of establishing this tension when we are introduced to Kelly’s “hacker friends”, Klipper and Kaos… yes those are their names, and yes that is one of the most late-90s “X-treme” things ever. Kelly starts making her plans to go to a new years party — which looked an awful lot like a rave, even if they never called it a rave.
On the big night, Alix — who is a doctor working overnight at an unnamed hospital — helps to deliver a “millennium baby”. Her understanding and awareness of the Y2K bug helps her catch a problem in the machines that nearly led to another doctor performing an emergency C-Section on a young mother. While this was happening, Kelly — who had been at the hospital with Alix and Donny — sneaks out and meets Klipper and Kaos in their creepy van to head to the party.
Meanwhile, Nick and his team of Y2K experts had been working to figure out what would happen to all of the other countries around the world. When midnight hit in the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific, the bug hit an F-18 fighter jet causing it to crash. As each time zone crossed into the new millennium power grids failed due to faulty computer systems.
Following the crash of the F-18, all air traffic in the US was grounded… except for one that couldn’t land before midnight. Sure enough, the bug hit and caused the plane to have to land without the use of its instruments, or power on the ground which meant no lights on the runway. Thankfully, our protagonist was there with the one scene from this movie that I’d actually remembered since watching it 25 years ago. Nick brought a bunch of firetrucks and ambulances out onto the runway to act as landing lights… never mind the fact that earlier in the film we were told that the computer chips in cars were vulnerable to the problem. Nevertheless, it was a pretty cool idea for an action scene. After a harrowing landing, Nick and his team depart on a helicopter for Washington state… it must have been a very fast helicopter.
While all of this was going on, we get the introduction of two more storylines. In New York, we meet a young couple getting engaged at Times Square just before the ball dropped at midnight. When the power goes out, they make their way to a bar where they see the second new storyline on the news (which is somehow still up and running). In a Texas prison, the Y2K bug struck again. This time, it caused the doors on the cells to fly open and the prisoners had taken over.
Back to Nick, he arrives at the Emerald Canyon nuclear power plant near the Puget Sound area of Washington. At first, everything seems fine, but after rebooting their computers, alarms start going off and people start freaking out. The core temperature is rising quickly and the none of the safety measures seem to be working to cool it down. Thankfully Nick Cromwell is here!
Nick decides to investigate the issue in person, but can’t be bothered to put on a radiation suit because, “It’ll just slow me down”… yeah. Good thing he has that plot armor instead…
At this point, sirens are going off and national guardsmen are helping in the evacuation of the area. Alix, still at the hospital, finally goes in to check on her kids only to find that Kelly had snuck out and gone to the party of the millennium at Club Oblivion. Alix and Donny hop in the car and head to the club to find Kelly.
The party itself looked like what you’d expect from a late-90s made for TV movie, but we only see it for a minute before Kelly and Kaos step outside for some fresh air. Boy, was it a good thing they did! While away from the thumping music, they could finally hear the sirens blaring from Emerald Canyon and suddenly Kelly realizes that she’d made a terrible mistake and maybe teenagers don’t always know more than their parents.
Kelly runs back inside to get Klipper so they can get away. She finds him and they run out, along with everyone else in the party who could apparently now hear both Kelly’s voice and the sirens. They run back to their van, an old VW bus — because given the era of this movie, of course it was — but it refuses to start… I’m pretty sure this wasn’t Y2K related.
The guys then proceed to show just how gentlemanly they can be by carjacking an old lady with a brick. Kelly, appalled by their behavior, refuses to go with them and they continue their mean streak by leaving her behind and driving off. Shortly thereafter, Alix and Donny roll up on the club only to find the ditched van and decide to head back to the hospital, assuming that Kelly would be heading there as well.
Back at Emerald Canyon, Nick and his team finally figure out that the reason the reactor is overheating is because there is a problem getting the valves to open to get water from outside. At this point, the incident unfolding at the nuclear facility is national news and everybody is waiting with bated breath to see what happens. So Nick and crew, along with some national guardsmen grabbed some hammers and wrenches and got to work… just kidding. They blew up a pier next to where the intakes were with a genuinely impressive explosion that probably ate up a fair bit of this films budget… man I miss practical effects.
This does the trick and soon thousands of gallons of water are gushing into the reactor, cooling the rods and preventing the meltdown with less than one minute to spare. The crisis ends with a nice scene of Nick and his dad — Grandpa Ben — just kind of hanging out in the reactor without their radiation suits…
As the story comes to an end, we see Kelly approaching the hospital just before Alix and Donny pull up behind her. They embrace. Kelly apologizes. Alix makes a cringy joke about how this had better not happen next millennium.
Just then Nick and Grandpa Ben show up at the hospital in time to find the now reunited family. Nick hugs Alix and the kids and I still can’t stop thinking about how the man is contaminating everyone he comes into contact with at this point. In any event, the day is saved and the movie ends with a news report where the power goes out.
Acting/Dialog: 2/10
I’m not going to lie, the acting in this movie is not great. I mean, I’ve seen a lot worse, but that doesn’t mean this was good. The delivery of lines from multiple characters felt like an NPC dialog from an early PlayStation 2 game. While I don’t know the background of every actor that was cast — and to be clear, some characters were played well — I did read up on several who came from the soap opera world which explained a lot. 2 out of 10.
Production Quality: 4/10
If you’re going to watch the movie, do not expect it to be an Avengers-level production. The only CGI you’re going to see are the on-screen graphics of the later 1990s, and maybe a couple of scenes with the airplanes. The audio was balanced well enough, the lighting was generally good. It was filmed for standard definition home televisions, not theatrical release. Could it have been better? Sure, but honestly I thought it was pretty good. Especially that explosion at the end. I’m a simple man, and that was a cool explosion…. 4 out of 10.
Storytelling: 1/10
The pacing was a little slow early on, but I feel like the movie found its pace about 1/3 of the way through.
However, the overall story here was pretty dumb. The main plot had enough to deal with, but up until Nick runs into a nuclear reactor without protection I was able to suspend my disbelief. My issue with the story is mostly with the subplots. The ongoing conflict between Alix and Kelly was okay, and I get why it’s there even if it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been. However, the way Klipper and Kaos go full GTA at the end and abandon their friend was weird. There wasn’t really anything setting the stage for them being those kind of people.
Remember the couple that got engaged? What happened with them? Why was their engagement pertinent to the story? Are they still hanging out at that bar? What about the Texas prisoners? Did the cops retake the prison? Did they recreate the Alamo? Did they get crafty and pull a Con-Air to escape? We just don’t know because those storylines were introduced and never returned to.
And did the story I explained above feel a little disjointed? Well, take into consideration that I actually moved some of my descriptions around chronologically to help you make sense of everything that was going on because it can get pretty confusing the way it’s shown in the movie.
Story-wise, it was a fun little blast from the past if you can look past things. It tells an intriguing story, even if the execution of said story was flawed. There are gaps in the logic, and pointless characters making it hard to be charitable; so while I might give the story a higher score, the storytelling really drags this film down. 1 out of 10.
Score/Soundtrack: 5/10
Like many other action thrillers of the time, this film received a score. It was composed by Brad Fiedel, notable composer for the first two Terminator films. Overall I would rate it as a positive. It wasn’t outstanding, but it was good. 5 out of 10.
Wild Card: Commercial Breaks 10/10
Do you want to know where this film really shines? The commercial breaks. The Archive.org link near the top of this article takes you to a video of the movie. It was originally a VHS recording of the broadcast that was then digitized and uploaded to the Internet Archive. That means the full and complete recording is available WITH its original commercial breaks. This was like going back in time. Below are some screenshots of some of them for your enjoyment.
And a few more…
Nostalgia-filled commercials from my childhood. 10 out of 10.
Overall Score: 4/10
Acting/Dialog: 2/10
Production Quality: 4/10
Storytelling: 1/10
Score/Soundtrack: 5/10
Wildcard: 10/10
Final Thoughts
I remember watching Y2K: The Movie when it aired back in 1999. I was in middle school at the time and didn’t think much of it, but for whatever reason it’s something from my youth that I remembered. I didn’t think it was particularly good, but it also wasn’t awful and I would say if you have a couple of hours to kill, you could do far worse (especially if you like B movies and the like).
This film scored a respectable 4 out of 10, but as you can see, that is only because of the commercial breaks. If you were to take those out and my wildcard was only based off of my own experience with it, it would have likely been no higher than a 2.4 out of 10.
