Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

A time traveler (Sam Rockwell) tries to save the world in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (Distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment)

The hilarious sci-fi satire Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die feels sort of familiar, while being entirely original. The closest comparison I can think of is Everything Everywhere All at Once, in terms of its ability to be weird, thoughtful, smart and funny. They are alike in feel, not really in any other way. This is more like if Terminator, Weapons and Being John Malkovich somehow had a baby together. It’s got time travel, apocalyptic stakes, wacky comedy, twists and surprisingly sharp social commentary. Director Gore Verbinski and writer Matthew Robinson are not afraid to go to some strange and dark places, shifting tones and trusting their viewers to keep up. It is wild, exciting and tremendously enjoyable. I sincerely hope it finds a big audience.

A man wearing a plastic poncho walks into a diner. He claims to be from a dystopian future, the path to which begins on this very night. In order to avoid it, he needs a group of patrons to go with him right away on a dangerous mission to save the world. Who has what it takes to blindly follow a man who seems completely insane?

The biggest target of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (127 minutes, without the end credits) is AI, specifically our increased reliance on it. It is basically saying that it is turning us into empty-headed robots who need computers for everything, to the point where we are no longer living our own lives. It does so using very funny exaggeration, made even funnier because this is coming out just a few weeks after Mercy, which seems to suggest that relying on AI to make decisions for us may actually be a decent idea. This screenplay shreds that concept, tying that kind of thinking to the downfall of humanity. It is dark, yet phenomenally entertaining.

Susan (Juno Temple), Janet (Zazie Beetz), Mark (Michael Peña), Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), Marie (Georgia Goodman) and Scott (Asim Chaudhry) are forced to help a time traveler save the world

Also dark is the bold section about school shootings, mocking our society’s reaction to them. This material is way over-the-top enough that it can’t be taken literally, though its version of parental grief could certainly be offensive to some. It plays into the delightfully cynical tone and works well to further the story and characters. Verbinski and Robinson push their premise as far as it can go, then find even more places to explore. There is so much going on here, with a bunch of characters and several subplots, but it never feels cluttered or overdone. The disparate elements come together in unexpected ways.

Part of that is a credit to the fantastic casting. Sam Rockwell is such a great fit as the time traveler that I cannot think of anyone else playing the role. His quirky abrasiveness is absolutely perfect. As his motley crew of reluctant potential heroes, Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz are an excellently weird assortment of personalities. I don’t want to describe their characters because part of the fun is discovering who they are as the story unfolds. However, the screenplay gives them all distinct arcs that make them stand out and set them apart from the unpredictable story.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is such a creative, compelling production that viewers should go in as cold as possible and enjoy the ride. It had been nine years since Gore Verbinski directed anything and six years since Matthew Robinson had a screenplay produced. They both picked the right project to dive back into. What a wonderful surprise.

4½ out of 5

Cast:

Sam Rockwell as Man

Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid

Juno Temple as Susan

Michael Peña as Mark

Zazie Beetz as Janet

Asim Chaudhry as Scott

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Matthew Robinson