Spoilers are still laughing.

Comedy is a very difficult film genre to do right, but it can be so satisfying to watch a silly joke with an intelligent setup. Making it look easy takes a lot of work. I especially love the art of making satire without naming anybody or anything but hitting the target spot-on. You’ll find all these in the following feature, which is why I’d recommend you go see it the moment you get a chance. Let’s punch in the dates and fire it up.

Molli and Max in the Future (2023) is written and directed by Michael Lukk Litwak. Molli (Zosia Mamet) is careening through space trying to find a magic crystal when she runs (literally) into Max (Aristotle Athari). The chance encounter is the usual adorable banter that you can tell will turn them into fast friends, but somehow they don’t quite match. Now, so far it’s a romantic comedy until you slowly but surely start to build the world around them. It’s a world of space cults, gods of all shapes and sizes, robot fighting and ruling the universe.

At the same time, it’s a familiar smorgasbord of endorsements, corrupt companies and elections decided on a game show via live audience voting. A female candidate is shamed with a false rumour of having eczema while a literal demon lord from the trash dimension promises it will kill everyone but becomes insanely popular. All while Molli and Max try online dating with other people. I mean technically they already tested parallel-dimension dating and that didn’t work, so why risk it?

Why does it work? Parody and satire are fickle. A little too fast, a little slow, too loud, not enough or anything slightly off the mark and you miss. But the comedy timing, the dialog and the overall tone in which you can already tell that Molli and Max are both outsiders to the universal crap that the future is bringing makes this one a really funny and silly comedy with a sharp wit.

Extremely recommended for parody and satire fans. This requires an appreciative audience willing to see beyond the obvious, so if you are looking for a rom-com or a sci-fi epic it’s neither or those and parodies both while satirizing our modern times. It does have some jokes/satires that might not feel relevant in a few years (or at least I hope they are not…). The irreverent tone of not taking the future seriously is one you won’t want to miss, as long as you’re into that sort of thing. Worth more than a watch for the right audience.

That will do for now.