Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Review

Mercy was a film about AI that AI could’ve written. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die also tackles AI, although it could only come from the mind of Gore Verbinski. As he did with his Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and Rango, Verbinski throws everything he has at the wall. Does it all come together in a tidy package? No, but Verbinski isn’t a tidy filmmaker. He’s one who embraces the surreal. Even if Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die isn’t always the most focused film, it is consistently funny, thought-provoking, and visually inventive. There’s a point in the film where one character asks a grieving mother to describe her late son, one of the options being “completely unhinged.” That sums up the film as well. 

Sam Rockwell plays a man from the future called… The Man From the Future. With an appearance that walks a fine line between high-tech and homeless, the Man announces himself as a diner of patrons. The Man claims to come from a future in which an evil AI has doomed humankind. Society is already more than halfway there. As someone who spends the first forty minutes of his morning on his phone, I can identify with the Man’s tirade about how it won’t be long until people don’t get out of bed at all. This fate can be prevented if the Man assembles the right team from the diner. The problem is that the Man needs a specific group of people, and he’s already been through this more than once. This is his 117th time, in fact. 

Among the Man’s selections are Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz as two teachers who find themselves powerless against their students, who’ve seemingly become a part of a hive mind. Juno Temple is a mother who considers cloning a loved one following a tragedy. There’s also Haley Lu Richardson as a young woman who’s allergic to phones and wi-fi. Basically, she’s Chuck from Better Call Saul if his disease were real. Asim Chaudhry and Georgia Goodman round out the Man’s ragtag team of hostages, some more willing than others. The Man may sound crazy, but several others realize that they’re not living in a sane world. 

As we delve into everyone’s backstories, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die plays like a season of Black Mirror. Instead of being self-contained, though, the episodes all collide into one. In addition to AI, Matthew Robinson’s script touched upon screen addiction and school shootings. That last one sounds heavy-handed (which it is), but it also leads to some of the most darkly hilarious moments. For all that the film bites off, it doesn’t feel like GLHFDD is trying to chew too much at once. That’s largely because the characters are so charming, the dialogue is self-aware without coming off as self-important, and the direction is pure Verbinski. 

It’s been almost a decade since Verbinski directed a feature. In that sense, it’s fitting that his return would center on a time traveler. The Man From the Future could be seen as a surrogate for Verbinski. Just as the Man tries to save humanity from an AI-driven world, Verbinski reminds us why cinema needs auteurs who will never play it safe. Whether or not Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a success out of the gate, the future will surely be kind to Verbinski’s film. It has all the makings of a cult classic with an offbeat sense of humor and themes that encapsulate the time, yet likely won’t be irrelevant years later. It’s not a film that’ll change the world, but as the title suggests, the main objective is to have fun… and not die.