Y2K
Y2K
| 22 December 1999 (USA)
Y2K Trailers

It's millennium eve. At the stroke of midnight the Y2K computer bug kicks in, causing widespread chaos in the US.

Reviews
HeyRick

I'm giving this a five out of ten. Not because I'm a moron, but because I think this movie is played with a straight face but is tongue in cheek and chock full of just about every applicable trope possible. Let's start with a quote from the beginning, spoken by a painfully over-the-top radio DJ:"They're about to celebrate the new millennium in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sixty-three million tuna are about to have the biggest party in history!"That, if nothing, should have been an indication not to take this film seriously. Then... There are many things here that if you were being analytical you'd blink twice before steam poured out of your ears. No no no, don't think. That's key. Just switch your brain off and go with the story. Don't worry, there's not much of a story, so it won't require effort. It's better than watching the rain out the window, right?PS: +1 to what all the other reviews said, but I think some actually took this film seriously. Oh dear!

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kzoofilm

With so much Y2K paranoia running rampant, it seems almost criminal of NBC to attempt to capitalize on people's fears by cranking out "Y2K: The Movie," a potboiler that purports to show us what could happen if worst-case scenarios play out on Jan. 1.No, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse don't ride in, but just about everything else that could go wrong does. Airplanes plummet out of the skies; doors swing open in prisons; rationing of groceries goes into effect; banks refuse to let people close out their accounts.The teleplay by Thomas Hines and Jonathan Fernandez lays out these calamities in the same shrill, overheated style once reserved for movies about "The Red Menace" and "Marijuana, The Weed with Roots in Hell." Like those cautionary tales, "Y2K" gets so swept up in trying to startle its audience that it finally exhausts your patience. It's ultimately little more than two hours of cardboard characters running a lengthy gauntlet. A disclaimer at the beginning insists the film is "purely fictional" and "does not suggest or imply that any of these events could actually occur." So why bother making "Y2K" at all? Certainly there are no stories here that desperately needed to be told.In typical disaster-movie fashion, Hines and Fernandez skip between multiple plot lines: a New York couple whose night of romance in Times Square is squelched by a power outage; an overzealous TV newswoman -- named Gaby, fitting enough -- who'd rather broadcast rumors instead of waiting for verified details about the various crises erupting; a sullen, disagreeable teen -- is there any other kind in bad made-for-TV movies? -- who gripes about having to spend New Year's Eve with her family instead of at a major-league rave; and, as our central figure, former MIT whiz kid Nick Cromwell (Ken Olin, late of "thirtysomething"), a self-professed "complex systems failure guy" who doubles as an all-purpose savior. As midnight falls across the country's four time zones, Nick has no time for guzzling champagne. He's zooming from one tragedy to another, quelling chaos at the airport by guiding a jet to a safe landing on a blacked-out runaway, then rushing to a nuclear power plant to prevent a meltdown. "Who would you want taking care of this: Nick or some Homer Simpson?" Nick's co-worker asks one of the Doubting Thomases who questions Cromwell's qualifications. The heroism must be genetic: Nick's dad (Ronny Cox), we learn, was part of the Apollo 13 rescue team.Olin, prefacing his every line with an anguished sigh, looks sorely in need of rescue himself. But then any actor would have trouble delivering the dialogue in "Y2K." Most of these lines could have been heated up and poured over nacho chips.Some of the movie's many sins might have been pardonable if "Y2K" had managed to include at least a few spectacular images or suspenseful situations. Instead, the special effects on view here are some of the chintziest since the last Gamera the Flying Turtle epic, and Dick Lowry's dull direction manages to make the nuclear plant sequences seem like "The China Syndrome" on Sominex.

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cmyklefty

I was excited to see this TV movie. NBC had advertised it during November 1999. Y2K plot was concerning what would happen in New Year's Eve 2000. I found it dull and uninteresting the plot. If Mystery Science Theater 3000 was still on the air, Y2K has it possibilities being on this show. A waste of time see Panic in Year Zero. The story is better than this movie.

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Anders

I just saw this movie on TV yesterday on January 6th. and I think it is one of the best movies of that kind that I've ever seen! I'm a Sci-fi fan and loves to play around with computers. I also at times in movies like the "take big risks that might mean giving up your own life to save a lot of others" kind of attitude if it is used in a realistic way and not in a like super hero kind of way. During the whole time this movie lasted I sat glued to the screen! It's actually a long time since I last did that! And it was also realistic in the way that just year ago and a few days we came to the same moment that this movie is all about. We did not know exactly what would happen when we around the world came to midnight on December 31st. Luckily we did not experience anything like in this movie, but there were a chance of it happening!So to everyone that is sci-fi fans, likes computers, likes excitement and likes it when people work together to save a whole nation or the world, this is the movie to watch! To everyone else, give it a shot anyway! You might just like the movie too! :)

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