Molli & Max in the Future is a throwback to 90’s rom-coms with a lo-fi sci-fi twist

Press releases and director’s statements for movies that we get sent at The Pitch often open with an elevator pitch: It’s X meets Y. Nine times outta ten, the combination in this elevator pitch is—at best—a set of aspirational goal posts that their end product would be better served if they skipped references to films that did it better. Molli & Max in the Future is one of the finest examples of the pitch for a film delivering exactly on its aspirations, to the point that any attempt to describe it more accurately is near impossible.

A charming, unexpected mix of When Harry Met Sally by way of Futurama, Molli & Max is the story of a woman (Zosia Mamet, The Flight Attendant, Girls) and a man (Saturday Night Live‘s Aristotle Athari) whose orbits repeatedly collide over the course of twelve years, four planets, three dimensions, and one space cult. The sci-fi rom-com with lo-fi visual aesthetics and incredibly small, tight scenes simply oozes wackadoo charm from every pore.

The Rob Reiner/Nora Ephron influence is a well that not enough projects dip back into these days. Our two leads keep stumbling up each other by chance, years and worlds apart, always maintaining a sorta of delighted disdain masking a genuine connection they’re both trying to repress. This playful game of back-and-forths has a timeless foundation, with a universal set of qualms between two personalities over everything from careers to art to food to taste to sexual encounters with other people to debates over the nature of love. That these small human moments occur entirely within spaceships or odd worlds spread across the universe in no way diminish their relative truth to the moment. Much like Harry and Sally, there’s probably plenty of yourself or your partner that you see on screen, even if that version of you is becoming a space wizard or mining illegal crystal asteroids. Hence, the solid bullseye of promoting the Futurama influence on all this—a more adult, complicated Fry and Leela in an even more abstract future, hashing out problems that rom-coms have tackled since the 80’s, is exactly what you get here.

Writer and director Michael Lukk Litwak brings together a support cast including Aparna Nancherla, Erin Darke, Arturo Castro, and Okieriete Onaodowan to round out the film with a few comedic side characters, but the real icing on the cake is the definitive visual style. Shot mostly in camera with hand-made models and rear-projection setups, the otherworldly glow of technology, futuristic cities, bizarre aliens, and stunning worlds would come off as cheap with standard CGI. Here, the old school nature helps an intimate little flirtatious flick absolutely soar.

Molli & Max in the Future hits cinemas, including Screenland Armour, on Feb. 9th.