Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson and Michael Pena
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Rated: R
Running Time: 133 minutes
Briarcliff Entertainment
Our Score: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
Imagine you’re sitting in a diner when a crazed man (unwashed for years but recently trimmed beard), wrapped in plastic with tubes dangling from his pants, storms in screaming, “I am from the future.” Thumb over a glowing button, ready to obliterate himself and everyone else, he announces that AI is about to rat-fuck the world and he needs a handful of strangers to help fix the future. You wouldn’t go. Right? “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” asks what happens when half a dozen people in that LA diner go, “Sure.”
Since it’s Gore Verbinski directing and Sam Rockwell playing the lunatic, of course the man is from the future. What starts as a bleakly funny “Black Mirror” sketch slowly expands into a string of “Black Mirror” episodes, both past and present, explaining why these people join him and just how unhinged their mission becomes. The absurdist comedy is strong, and while the film is technically anti-AI, it’s not in the usual “technology run amok” way. Instead, it holds up a mirror to the ways we’ve voluntarily outsourced societal functions to technology because dealing with real issues would require effort, empathy, and other things we’ve collectively misplaced.
Without spoiling the future-gone-sideways gags, Verbinski’s thesis is blunt: for every problem, there’s a technological solution. But instead of ocean-cleaning robots or cancer-curing models, the solution here is to further normalize school shootings. It comes complete with tiered pricing and the ad-supported version for those who can’t afford dignity. It’s bleak, but it’s also very funny in that “we deserve this future” way.
Rockwell’s manic energy works in short bursts, so Juno Temple, Michael Peña, Haley Lu Richardson and others carry the emotional stakes as the volunteers on this bizarro adventure that may (or may not) involve killing a child who may (or may not) be one keyboard stroke removed from becoming an “Akira” creature. Describing it without sounding like a monster is hard; the dystopia is constantly undercut by zany dry wit.
A film like this keeps escalating, so sticking the landing matters. The finale half-sticks it as both a bit of a cop-out and an earned payoff. Social satire + time travel rarely behaves in the third act, but even when it wobbles, the ride is worth it. It’s the rare AI comedy that feels original in both messaging and execution, and while the flaws are visible, the ideas linger. I suspect a second viewing will reveal more.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is profound and silly at the same time. It’s an AI film arriving before a wave of bad “AI-gone-wrong” movies (looking at you “Mercy”) floods theaters. It’s unique, funny, and uncomfortably close to the world we’re already building, if not already living and breathing in.