Michael Lukk Litwak's Molli and Max in the Future

For a limited time, our friends at the EarBuds Podcast Collective will recommend a podcast to pair with our headlining film.

This week: Just Friends with Lauren Passell and Holly Brown. DB is a sex educator with a masters in public health who hosts the Sex Ed with DB podcast. She published a few episodes looking into how sex has been depicted in romantic comedies over the years. This episode looks at Just Friends (2005) — pairing well with this week's TNMN pick — a sci-fi twist on the romantic comedy genre.

— Arielle at EarBuds Podcast Collective

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A spoiler-free description of the movie.

A man and a woman in the future cross paths over the course of 12 years.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

→ When your high school substitute teacher wheeled in a TV and put on an educational science VHS. The visual style of this film feels like a cross between that sort of thing and a lo-fi Tron.

→ When Harry Met Sally. Though I wouldn’t put this film in the same league — the filmmaker takes inspiration from the story, score, and conversational style of the Rob Reiner classic.

→ Self-aware space humor. The kind of writing where everything in space is a derivative of the word “glorp”.

What I liked about it.

I’m ashamed to admit it. I just watched When Harry Met Sally. Like, last week. Please — throw something at me. I deserve it.

I was inspired to watch the classic after finishing this week’s headliner, Michael Lukk Litwak's Molli and Max in the Future.

Molli and Max kicks off with a swinging, jazzy, late-night New York score that feels so clearly reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally.

But, unlike Rob Reiner’s classic, the score stands in stark contrast to the decidedly not New York setting. There are sci-fi spaceships and aliens and robots humming and whizzing and beeping in the background. Many scenes are beautifully, entirely awash in a glowing, neon red, purple, or blue — not far away from how It’s What’s Inside played with color.

The lo-fi, retro-futuristic design language of the film is affable. Like a group of friends got together with a roll of duct tape and old cardboard boxes and decided to build space helmets and ships and robots.

None of this is meant to be condescending. A tremendous amount of work went into the effects of this film, notably produced on a small budget with an even smaller team. And the end product is impossibly endearing.

The endearing quality of any romance film, though, no doubt, relies on the chemistry between its leads. And fortunately, Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari are both quite charming in the film.

The philosophical tension between the characters — the way they work on each other throughout the film — is a stone’s throw from Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s work in When Harry Met Sally.

Mamet brings her own unique sense of comedy and self-aware humor to the role. I’m not sure many actresses can be found in rom-coms angrily howling out lines like “I’m a level 7 space witch. I can fly, you idiot!”

And Athari — a short-lived, underused SNL cast member — is equally charming with his dry, matter-of-fact delivery of lines like “I mean, you can’t spell Oceanus without anus.”

Writer-director Litwak and his cinematographer, Zach Stoltzfus, also found a ton of humor in designing tongue-in-cheek space creatures and sets. Like Mobius, an alarmingly horny space Octopus and cult leader.

Paying tribute to its sci-fi roots, Molli and Max veers into some rather wicked political and social commentary on top of its sharp perspective on modern romance.

I often think that creativity is a bit of a stew. You take this and that from different things you like — and in combining the elements, you find something entirely new.

Molli and Max in the Future is a film that draws from a few different wells. I’ve already made clear the relationship to films like When Harry Met Sally.

But there’s also nihilistic space humor in the vein of Rick and Morty. Balanced with some of the political commentary present in works like Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This unexpected combination of elements results in an unafraid piece of work — one that simultaneously delivers goofball humor, deft social and political commentary, and a surprising amount of emotional heft.

Enjoy the film.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat”.

→ The director and editor are married. The film's editor, Joanna Naugle, had been reading drafts of Litwak’s script for years. She (understandably) has a great sense of his taste in film — and therefore was able to produce a rough cut of the work within a few days of picture wrap (far more quickly than is typical).

→ The film contains over 900 visual effects shots. This is a lot for an indie budget. Litwak spent 18 months prior to principal photography designing, printing, building, shooting, and processing visual effects plates along with cinematographer Zach Stoltzfus. They designed and executed over 90% of the visual effects themselves.

One great line of dialogue from the film.