'Millennium Bugs' will have its World Premier at Dances with Films on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020.
Millennium Bugs; a dramedy about two best friends who must make life changing
decisions during the end of the world. This movie straps you in for an hour and a half of
character arcs as flat as the jokes they told. Corny and cringey elements throughout has the
audience wishing for a rewrite, while also thanking them from time to time for some comedic
relief from the overwhelmingly lackluster emotional execution.
Our main character, Kelly,
played by Katy Erin, serves as an annoyance whenever the film is focused on her journey, which
completely pulls me away from being invested in her feelings and hardships. With the way she
was written, it’s also hard to fathom that anyone would even be friends with her. Our hardly
believable best friend, Miguel, played by Michael Lovato, had me a little checked out with his
acting ability to convince me of the weight he wants us to believe he’s carrying, yet I turned out
to be somewhat worried about him and his eventually likeable character in the end. The erratic
editing styles at some points were harshly missing for me on most occasions, and had me feeling
like they’d been wanting to do a certain sort of editing for a while, so they just threw it in this
movie.
Something I WISH they would’ve thrown in the movie was character development. Who
you see in the beginning of the film is exactly who you’re getting in the end. It definitely
tarnishes a viewing experience when a primarily dialogue driven movie doesn’t have the
slightest change in their characters for the entirety of the watch, especially when Miguel has no
reciprocating love from Kelly in the beginning, therefore we get to see 90 minutes of an
unrealistic friendship. This film also implies a lot of things and doesn’t actually show the
audience proof of it. The time is set a week away from the possible the end of the world, yet I
forgot about that for almost the whole movie because I was never won over to that concept after
it was mentioned. I never felt like anything was at stake. Also, Miguel is a “struggling
comedian”, yet there are no scenes of him working on jokes or actually attempting to grow in his
craft. He just wishes he was better. Kelly doesn’t want to sell her house (for a reason that I can’t
explain in this review), but the movie just IMPLIES why she doesn’t want to, and doesn’t
actually SHOW us why. I guess I would say this picture is mainly driven by dialogue in the
majority of the explanations for why these characters are the way they are, yet offer no visual
confirmation towards the claims they write.
Overall, this film failed to convince me of the
afflictions of these characters. If you have a dramedy that doesn’t hit its jokes and doesn’t hit the
key, emotional aspect, what are you left with? I know the low budget could’ve had something to
do with the overall product, but a low budget has nothing to do with writing and dialogue
execution. Although this review has been primarily negative, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t
decently enjoyable. I’d definitely be interested in seeing the future films of Alejandro Montoya
Marin to pin-point his style, and track his hopeful progress.
Rating: 1.75 out of 5
Jared Sims (Contributor) is born and raised in Tampa, FL. Loves writing music and watching movies while in high hopes of seeing himself on the big screen one day.Click Here to check out Jared's Articles.