Molli and Max in the Future Review: Lo-Fi Love in Orbit

Is Molli and Max in the Future worth watching?

Yes, with reservations. Molli and Max in the Future is a charming, genuinely romantic indie that turns a tiny budget into a playful vision of the cosmos, even if not every joke or episode connects. Writer-director Michael Lukk Litwak has a real gift for building a whole universe out of cardboard, green screen and wit, and his two leads make an appealing pair. The reservation is its scattershot structure: some chapters sparkle, others feel like sketches waiting for a punchline.

What is Molli and Max in the Future about?

Molli and Max in the Future is a science-fiction romantic comedy about a man and a woman whose paths keep colliding over roughly a dozen years. Molli (Zosia Mamet) and Max (Aristotle Athari) meet by chance in a far-future setting and, as the years pass, keep drifting in and out of each other’s lives through relationships, career changes and the strange institutions of a galaxy that is both exotic and oddly familiar.

The film is built as a series of check-ins rather than a single continuous plot, and its speculative world supplies the obstacles. Arturo Castro and Okieriete Onaodowan appear in supporting roles. It is an American independent production in English, premiered at SXSW in 2023, and runs a brisk 93 minutes.

A universe made by hand

The film’s look is its calling card. Litwak builds his future out of visibly homemade effects, bold backdrops, practical props and deliberately unslick compositing, and the effect is less a cheap imitation of a blockbuster than a storybook version of space. Planets, spacecraft and alien bureaucracies are sketched with a cartoonist’s economy, and the handmade quality becomes part of the humour.

That approach also shapes the tone. Because nothing is meant to look real, the film can jump between absurdist jokes about far-future life and sincere moments between its leads without jarring. The sci-fi trappings are mostly a way of exaggerating ordinary things, such as dating, ambition and the pull of belonging to something bigger, until they become funny.

Two leads who make the romance count

The will-they-won’t-they structure recalls When Harry Met Sally, and like that film it depends on two people who are pleasant to spend time with. Zosia Mamet gives Molli a restless intelligence and a slightly guarded humour, while Aristotle Athari plays Max as earnest and a little lost, a man who knows what he wants long before he knows how to get it. Their rapport grows across the film’s jumps in time, and the best scenes are the quiet ones, where the jokes fall away and two people simply talk.

Because the leads keep the story grounded, the film’s central question, whether these two will ever line up their timing, retains real pull even when the surrounding comedy wanders.

Where the orbit wobbles

The structure that gives the film its shape also limits it. Each chapter introduces a new situation, new side characters or a new piece of cosmic satire, and the quality varies. Some gags are sharp, while others are thin ideas stretched to fill a scene. Supporting characters come and go too quickly to register, and the satirical targets can feel broad. At 93 minutes the film never drags, but it rarely builds momentum either, relying on the leads to carry the audience from one episode to the next.

Who should watch Molli and Max in the Future?

It is a good choice for viewers who enjoy offbeat independent comedies, low-budget sci-fi with personality, and romances that take their time. If you prefer your science fiction polished and plot-driven, this will likely feel slight. Content is mild, with some adult language and themes but nothing graphic, and the short runtime makes it an easy evening experiment.

If it clicks for you, these make good companions:

• Project Hail Mary, a far bigger production that shares its belief that space stories can be funny and tender at once.
• I Love Boosters, Boots Riley’s surreal satire, for more absurdist American genre invention.
• Star Wars, the space opera whose iconography this film cheerfully borrows and deflates.

The verdict

Molli and Max in the Future proves that imagination and a likeable central couple can carry a film a long way. Its episodic structure and patchy comedy keep it from greatness, but as a warm, handmade science-fiction romance it has more personality than many films with a hundred times its budget.

Rating: 3.5/5