Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
by Hope Madden
Say Sam Rockwell, ragged clothes under homemade explosives and draped in clear plastic, walks into the late-night diner where you’re eating and claims to be from the future. I mean, if anybody’s going to do it, it’ll be Sam Rockwell.
The reliably loose cannon stars in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, director Gore Verbinski’s first film since 2016’s regrettable A Cure for Wellness. The sci-fi time loop fantasy sees Rockwell as a man on a mission: find the little boy whose AI is going to destroy the world and keep him from finishing it. But it will take the perfect mix of people to help him, and he knows those people are here, in this diner, on this night.
He knows about certain groupings that are not the saviors because he’s tried this exact thing many times already. Many, many times. But he’s got a weird feeling about tonight’s recruits: an unhappily married teacher couple (Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña), a mousy woman sitting alone (Juno Temple), a woman who just wanted to relax with some pie (Georgia Goodman), a tough guy (Asim Chaudhry), and a Goth princess (Haley Lu Richardson).
Matthew Robinson’s script spins each recruit’s backstory with its own little chapter—because chapters are a really popular cinematic device right now—gives us not only a bit of intel on the character, but also some context.
Robinson’s greatest achievement is the alarming mix of gallows humor and rainbow colored confetti. His characters race against the clock, video game like, to beat level after level of difficulties before finally entering the final layer—well, Sam’s never made it this far, so who knows what’s in there?
And don’t start guessing because that basically guarantees the form of your doom. At least don’t think about Mr. Sta Puft.
Speaking of Bill Murray, the film owes as much to Groundhog Day as it does Terminator, and that’s a heady mix. The imaginative side plots and character arcs feel wild and random, but the script is actually built quite solidly.
And the theme—that AI cannot help but ruin human existence—may not be new, but it’s truer than ever. Thankfully, Verbinski, along with his game cast and writer, recognizes the bitter, cynical humor in the fact that this hero is probably already too late. But hey, at least he can blow himself up and start over.
