The Anti-AI Mania of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”
Director Gore Verbinski has had a strange career. He began making music videos for punk bands like NOFX and L7 before moving on to the forgotten Brad Pitt/Julia Roberts movie “The Mexican,” the American remake of the “The Ring,” and three “Pirates of the Carribean” films. For the first 20 minutes of his new science fiction time travel comedy I thought “Is this going to be my favorite movie of the year?”
The film opens with a filthy, disheveled man played by Sam Rockwell bursting into a Los Angeles diner in the middle of the night. He loudly proclaims that he is from the future. Cell phones and artificial intelligence have destroyed the world, and he needs volunteers to help save humanity. This is a mission he’s attempted and failed over 100 times before. He just needs the right combination of people from this diner to make it work.
This setup could not be more up my alley. However, things quickly unravel. The movie starts utilizing flashback sequences of the various people in the diner, exploring their lives and providing glimpses of the horrors that AI will unleash. These backstories, while vital to the plot, feel undercooked. There’s an especially bleak one about school shootings played for dark humor that did not land at all.
The movie works best when we’re in the main storyline with our core group trying to save the future. These segments resemble “one crazy night” 1980s comedies like “Big Trouble in Little China,” “After Hours” or even “Adventures in Babysitting.” There’s even a Thor helmet! (kind of)
Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, and Haley Lu Richardson co-star with Rockwell and are all great. Pena has lines so funny I wish he had more to do.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is far from perfect and definitely not for everyone. A lot of its flaws could have been fixed by just trimming down the two hour and 14 minute runtime. But if you enjoy an unhinged movie in the vein of a less prestigious “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” it’s safe to say you will indeed have fun.
Rating: 7/10
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is now in theaters.
