17 hours ago
4
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when a movie as intensely anti-phone as “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” would probably have been seen as insufferably preachy, or, at the very least, deeply embarrassing. Think of the period in the mid-2010s when people had generally positive opinions about Elon Musk, when Jason Reitman’s internet morality play “Men, Women, and Children” was received with scorn upon release, when “Black Mirror” was popular but also invited many derisive jokes about its “what if phone but too much” method of storytelling.
Of course, a lot has changed in the past decade, to the point that being a proud Luddite has become more en vogue than the tech-optimism that marked early social media’s past. In an age where most apps downloaded on your phone are cesspools of misinformation and bigotry, and seemingly half of the Super Bowl commercials this year were advertising AI platforms, it’s easy to feel like the robot apocalypse promised upon humanity by “The Matrix” and “The Terminator” is days away from our doorstep.
In this climate, a mostly goofy movie like “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” takes on a note of relevance, maybe even a feeling of urgency. That is definitely asking too much of the film, with a hit-or-miss script from “The Invention of Lying” writer Matthew Robinson that seems to be aiming for an “Everything Everywhere All at Once”-style mix of memey humor and pathos that gels only sporadically. Take the film instead as what it is: an enjoyable, likable, and well-crafted lark that offers some cathartic preaching to the choir for everyone sick of ChatGPT, as well as a welcome ticket out of director’s jail for filmmaker Gore Verbinski, who makes his return to the multiplex after nine years.
‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’Possessing a sort of gonzo, slightly off-kilter sensibility that has made his best films like the “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Mouse Hunt” endure despite their limitations, Verbinski enlivens “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” on every level, supplying the overstuffed 2-hour sci-fi adventure with plenty of hyperactive, kinetic sequences that makes the film a zippy treat. Take the opening, in which an unnamed man (a bearded Sam Rockwell, rocking a crazy DIY apocalypse suit) holds up a NORMS diner in Los Angeles, claiming to be from the future and calling on the patrons — most of whom go right back to their phones — to join him in a quest to save the world from the upcoming apocalypse. The long, drawn-out scene — with jokes that only occasionally land — could risk being tedious, but Rockwell’s performance and Verbinski’s direction, which flits around the diner like a fly on speed, make it immediately engaging.
Past the opening sequence, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” doesn’t really try to create any tension over whether or not Rockwell’s character is really from the future, although that question becomes a minor source of conflict among the six people who do agree to join this nebulously presented mission. Said mission is intentionally a bit shaggy and underwhelming — their grand adventure amounts to making it to a house five blocks away — but the overly long running time ensures it runs out of steam before they reach their destination.
Robinson’s script piles on plenty of complications and obstacles for the ragtag group of misfits to contend with — a pair of thugs, a crazed homeless man, a sort-of proto-zombie horde — that mostly come across as the plot devices they are. The dialogue occasionally pulls out a zinger but often lands at the obvious, and the relationships that form between this motley group never really cohere into something
That said, Verbinski makes a lot of what happens fun, in spite of itself. The action is crisp and easy to follow; a car chase scene is thrilling entirely because of what he does behind the camera. James Whitaker’s cinematography leans into a blue-hued, grubby aesthetic that gives the film a gritty charm, while touches like the chant that goes along with the film’s title card perfectly add to its aesthetic charms. The visual effects are particularly inspired, getting a ton of mileage out of riffing on the queasy, vaguely gross sheen of AI-created monstrosities, from fake-looking backdrops to a truly horrifying enemy that serves as one of the group’s final roadblocks.
In addition to the main story, “Good Luck” is filled with long flashback sequences peppered throughout of the mission goers’ days leading up to the diner hold-up. That makes “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” at times resemble something akin to an anthology film. None of these segments offers particularly novel approaches to their subject matter, although the overall effectiveness of the three varies wildly.
The dullest focuses on Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz, who puncture the movie with some sharp line reads but are largely wasted in thankless roles as Mark and Janet, two teachers in a strained romantic relationship. Their segment starts at one true but basic idea — teenagers today are too reliant on cell phones — and never goes past it. The next, focusing on Juno Temple’s Susan, invites a lot of natural comparisons to “Black Mirror” (specifically, the acclaimed “Be Right Back” episode) although it finds a relatively different angle and a lot of morbid humor in centering its heady sci-fi concept around school shootings and Temple lands on a potent humor and sadness as an anguished, overwhelmed grieving mom.
The most important segment belongs to the film’s stealth true protagonist, Haley Lu Richardson’s morbid Ingrid, a woman in a ruined princess costume who is nearly rejected from the mission and quite obviously has some bigger connection to everything going on. Her backstory — following her isolated life as someone allergic to Wi-Fi and the loss of her boyfriend (Tom Taylor) to a virtual world — isn’t particularly revelatory, but there’s pathos and emotion to it that makes it devastating. And in a solid cast, it’s Richardson, who has always shone at playing characters fed up and a little lost, who most successfully locates the palpable desire for a world of real human connection away from the screen that should be the story’s center.
It’s not really a surprise then when “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” chooses to readjust to focus on Ingrid in its climax, which is also when the film finally reaches its full, absurd potential: the impressive special effects reach that excessive “Everything Everywhere” quality the film is clearly inspired by, while the conclusion has a simultaneously cruel but ultimately optimistic open-endendness that recalls a “Tales of the Crypt” episode. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s a film that, in all its excess and flaws, feels human-made. And if that sounds like a low form of praise, well, just take a look at the AI hell we live in to be proven otherwise.
Grade: B-
Briarcliff Entertainment will release “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” in theaters on Friday, February 13.
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