It’s been 10 years since Gore Verbinski took the director’s seat, and — surprise, surprise — a lot has changed since. With Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, Verbinski lets out a confused, hallucinatory, yet fervid scream at the future, a future spurred by the so-called progress that has been unleashed upon the world in this past decade-plus. The film is a tangled web of panic and fear masked by weird, frantic black comedy.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is undeniably messy, toeing the line between mind-numbing stupidity and opining on the similarly stupid ideals of “progress” we have succumbed to. Subtlety be damned, Verbinski’s latest is an inspired, complicated, hilarious, and deeply entertaining soapbox built out of a knotted cluster of loose threads. Its poster — a mess of cords and images that are seemingly bursting out of lead Sam Rockwell’s head — might as well be the movie’s thesis: a tangled eruption of bleak comedy, techno fear, and mind-fuckery. It feels like you’re witnessing Verbinski’s head explode onto the screen, his fears and anxieties funnelled through humor and wild fun.
The film depicts a dystopian future that, on the surface, doesn’t seem too dissimilar from reality, even if everything is dialed to 15. School shootings occur frequently, yet it’s so commonplace that teachers, students, and parents alike barely react — they even have cloning centers for the victims. Teenagers are locked into their phones, mindlessly scrolling through benign images. Virtual reality headsets promise a better, technologically enhanced reality inside the screen. In the screen, there is no pain, no hardship; it’s pure bliss.
At least, that’s what the screen promises. But Rockwell, known only as the “man from the future,” is here to save the world. In a sort of Groundhog Day (1993) fashion, Rockwell has tried to save the world over a hundred times, to no avail. Perhaps tonight will be different.
He is from a future where society has completely unraveled under the boot of tech and artificial intelligence. One AI program becomes the new God, bringing all it can into its digital reality. Humanity became so sucked into the screen that it lost itself. Half the population dies; the other half lives in the digital world, except Rockwell, of course, who is on a mission to stop the AI by uploading safety measures into its source code.
Verbinski situates his core fear, anger, and comedy in this dystopia, a world in which “reality” is blurred under the reign of technology. It’s not a new fear, yet no one has explored it in this way. For decades, AI has made an easy villain; now, as AI and tech infect every sector of our lives, the anxiety rings a bit more real. For Verbinksi, the screen promises everything yet gives nothing. It sells us on ease, productivity, and closure so that it may imprison all of us in its apocalyptic utopia.
Rockwell, though, is hell-bent on stopping his future from coming to fruition. Dressed from head to toe in a confusing mess of wires, tubes, and plastic, he is devoted to his mission, willing to replay one night endlessly until he gets it right. Tonight is the night the AI is born, and the only way to stop it, for some reason, is to recruit a rag-tag team at a Los Angeles diner and get across town to the house where the AI is being built.
Tonight, Rockwell is on try number 117. He knows what the night brings, even if it has quirks and twists that he can never predict. Together, he and his misfit team must escape the diner now surrounded by gung-ho police officers, race across town while being chased by unknown armed men in pig masks, and survive the ever-changing final obstacle. Some of the group will die, but all that matters is that Rockwell reaches the source and uploads the security measures; if he doesn’t succeed, he will reset the night and try again.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die has a lot on its mind, weaving together various narratives and characters to construct an embattled “push” against the wave of the future. Rockwell’s gang is full of all sorts of odd characters, each of whom has felt the fear over the future that his character prophesies. As our characters trek across town, the film splices backstories to each of our main team members, creating an odd tapestry of otherworldly anxiety.
Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) are high school teachers terrified of their screen-addicted students. Susan (Juno Temple) lost her son in a school shooting, but was able to clone him with a lookalike who, since she chose the cheaper, ad-supported plan, lets Susan know that she should really try out this great new tea brand. Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) is allergic to WiFi and cell phones, so she works with children, dressing as a princess for birthday parties. Living with her allergy is hard enough, but life gets harder when her boyfriend, Tim (Tom Taylor), becomes a screen zombie himself.
This is all to say that Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a complex web of relationships, personalities, and issues. Verbinski weaves this all together into a haphazard construction of world-building, distilling our reality into a hellish mess of our worst nightmares. In so doing, the film takes huge swings, even if it plays it all off with truly effective comedy. Each of these people has a deeply human inclination, yet they are lost in the sea of this current reality. While not all of them hit as hard as you may like, they nonetheless work effectively to give the movie its confused heart.
And that really is the core of the film: absurd, bleak confusion masked by comedy and thrill. There are times when Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die will leave you scratching your head at just what is going on (especially in one moment involving a cat-thing — you will know what I mean when you see it). Yet the confusion, the mindfuckery, is the point itself. It feels like an explosion of inexplicable terrors, tech-based anxieties that Verbinski clearly cares about.
There aren’t many films as full-throated in their shamelessly confused panic, yet it’s impressive that, despite its sheer absurdity, it never loses its heart. There is a humanity in the center of this dystopia, a longing for love, for a mother’s embrace, for the beauty of a sunrise. Technology, in its promises, separates us from all of that. Our “helpful” creation turns into our imprisonment.
And that is where Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’s absurdity starts to click into place. It denies common sense, congruity, and logic in ways that only a human can. The AI, as Rockwell often states, promises closure and ease so that it may control us, keeping us on a zombified IV drip of easy pleasure. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die denies that inclination at its very core, including its ending.
Throughout all of this befuddling two-plus hours, though, Verbinski keeps the audience engaged and entertained. He fills the film with comedic twists and turns, and each of its main characters brings enough heart to their absurd roles to keep it afloat, even if it strays into tangents and threads that don’t always add up. Rockwell, in particular, is wonderful as a crazed leader. He brings levity when it is most needed, keeping the film from getting bogged down in its lofty swings. He, really, is the movie’s heart and soul. Through him, his shrugging attitude, his devoted mission, and his tragic core, Rockwell sells the film.
Rockwell isn’t alone in his role, though; Richardson and Temple, especially, are essential. Richardson brings an edgy attitude and sorrow that always keep the film’s compass pointing in the right direction. Temple, too, is perhaps the most emotionally effective of the bunch, adding a sense of confused pain that helps keep the silliness of everything in balance.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is certainly anything but a sensical, straight-line outing at the movies, even if its sheer entertainment value and comedic chops are enough to remember. I’m unsure, too, that it is as completely effective in its takedown as it aims to be, its absurdity obscuring its realities. It is, though, wild and unique, an intentional mess of real fear and bleak laughter that is better profoundly felt than understood. It’s as if Beau Is Afraid ( 2023) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) had a baby, and its godparents were The Matrix (1999)and Ready Player One (2018).
While it may not connect every thread into a whole, Verbinski’s return to the director’s chair is a welcome, inspired scream into the abyss. Its sheer existence is remarkable. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is unhinged and insane; so insane that nothing other than a human being with human fears, human emotions, and human laughter could have made it.
Review Courtesy of Carson Burton
Feature Image Credit to Briarcliff Entertainment via IMDb