Your mileage will certainly vary with this one.
A man from the future bursts into an American diner and recruits several customers at random. His intent? To save the world from impending AI catastrophe. Is he talking nonsense? Can the team succeed if it is true?
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is directed by Gore Verbinski (A Cure for Wellness, Pirates of the Caribbean) and is written by Matthew Robinson (the Monster Trucks movie). It stars Sam Rockwell (Moon), Juno Temple (small screen’s Fargo), Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña (Ant-Man), and Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2). For a movie that has flown under the radar, that is quite a stacked cast with a respected director at the helm. What could possibly go wrong?
It could be written badly. That’s… That’s what I’m going for here.
The story starts in an American diner called Norms. The customers are interrupted when crazy man covered in junk barges in and proclaims several things: He’s from the future; the world is going to end; it is because of AI and cell phones; and he needs people to go with him on a mission to stop it from happening. He also claims the trigger he holds is a literal bomb. What follows are various flashback vignettes explaining each member of the team’s backstory. All of these occur during a mad caper around the town, looking for the source of a world-ending AI.
Sometimes when digging for gems you get cut. I went into this film with high hopes. No one was talking about it, it was sci-fi, and Verbinski’s name is on it. Unfortunately I found myself underwhelmed by it overall.
For positives, Sam Rockwell is having a blast as he always does. He is stealing every scene he’s in. There are brief scenes that are promising concepts. Think of them as Black Mirror lite. It is a zany, no-brakes black comedy with some surprisingly dark concepts. For example, a mother has her deceased child cloned, but as a result, he has to parrot advertisements at her. Or the fact that in this world, school shootings are so common that mothers have support groups; their cloned children even die the same way. Pretty dark stuff. But all played with the Cheshire cat smiles of satire.
The film is also an original idea. This isn’t based off a comic, or a book, or a TV show. We do need more of these. It is visually bizarre and has an almost 1990s vibe in its direction. It feels quite low-budget for what it is doing; like a bunch of people just mucking around in someone’s backyard at times.
But…
What’s the first thing you think of when someone proclaims phones are bad? Is your answer “phones turn people in zombies?” Well done. A large portion of the film is dedicated to a metaphor so old it has grandchildren. With teenagers clawing at windows mindlessly. This film even features graffiti that is the “ape to human to human-with-a-phone” evolution. We have Michael Peña and Beetz trying to get through to these children but oh, so quirky, they just can’t be reasoned with.
These things are subtext, and not the ultimate drive and overall story. But for subtext, it is pretty uninspired. To launch the film with these tired metaphors and tropes, invites disinterest. The actual story, which revolves around Sam Rockwell’s character, isn’t explored enough. Isn’t implemented in a particularly novel or interesting way. We’d rather explore these other boring characters who don’t have much to give to the story.
It feels like a movie that’s been left behind with the rapid evolution of tech in our society. If this had released five years ago, I might have been more favourable to it. I certainly have no love for AI, then or now, yet this felt like tedious pandering written by someone who hopes that it will be enough.
If you are less familiar with science fiction, or go in with lower expectations, it will be a good time. But I feel like I am already forgetting portions of the movie.
