Molli and Max in the Future

by Mike McGranaghan

Molli and Max in the Future is a low-fi, futuristic rom-com with a big heart. It has a relatively small cast of actors who carry out their scenes in front of a green screen. Colorful, cheesy backgrounds are then inserted behind them. The effect serves to highlight the dialogue and the interactions between the main players. The film is quirky-with-a-capital-Q, but if you’re receptive to the offbeat style, you’ll easily be won over.

Molli (Zosia Mamet) and Max (Aristotle Athari) have a “meet cute” when their flying cars crash into each other. A flirtation develops, although they don’t act on it. The two catch up again several times over the years, on different planets and in different dimensions. The movie has fun with that age-old cliché where we know two people are meant to be, even though they don’t. Both are in humorously different places each time they reconnect, making it tough to acknowledge the love they visibly share. Other conventions are similarly given an oddball twist, including the romantic rival and the climactic great awakening.

The movie also throws in social satire. As events play out between the leads, a TV reality show determines who will get to rule the universe. One contestant is a perfectly nice – and therefore extremely unpopular – woman; the other is a loud, obnoxious grifter named Turboschmuck (Michael Churnus) from the “trash dimension” who inexplicably develops a rabid following. You get one guess who he’s patterned after. This whole background subplot is extremely funny.

Mamet and Athari have a cool, low-key chemistry together. They perfectly execute the film’s kooky take on the standard “immature big dreamer guy / overly practical, slightly repressed girl” dynamic without losing the emotional content. Especially in the last act, you come to believe that Molli and Max are figuring out their feelings. The stars’ performances are intentionally droll, yet never to the point of artificiality. They infuse the story with sincerity to balance out the eccentricities.

Molli and Max in the Future is refreshingly different from anything else out there right now. Writer/director Michael Lukk Litwak has made an appealingly idiosyncratic movie with a core of sweetness.

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