‘GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE’ Attempts to Save The Future in Bombastic A.I. Apocalypse Comedy

At exactly 10:10 PM at Norm’s Diner in Los Angeles, a bedraggled man in a hot-wired slicker claims he’s from the future. His message is simple: the end is nigh. In the coming days, A.I. slop will enslave humanity. Tonight is the last night to stop it. The diners must put down their pie slices and burgers and join him to save the future, lest they obliviously frog-march toward their demise. Operating off an absolutely bonkers script from Matthew Robinson, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die marks the return of veteran director Gore Verbinski, who hasn’t helmed a feature since 2016’s underrated gothic horror A Cure for Wellness. The result is something completely zany, culturally prescient, and often rather funny.

With an impressive ensemble that includes Sam Rockwell, Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, and Zazie Beetz, Verbinski’s latest works best as a satirical dark comedy commenting on the zombification of humanity at the behest of its phones, the passivity of a society that blindly “accepts” the sacrifice of school shootings, and a culture that cedes most critical thought to machines for the sake of convenience. It works much better as a comedic parable than as a straight action-adventure, with Robinson’s script taking many wild turns into pure absurdity that more often than not elicit a good chuckle.

Rockwell is the Man from the Future, the harbinger of a dire warning: tonight an all-powerful A.I. will be born. In six months, half the population will be dead and the rest will be so glued to their devices that they will hardly notice. But he has an ace up his sleeve: some combination of the diners at Norm’s tonight can help him stop what’s coming. He knows this because he has run this world-saving scenario nearly 200 times in a Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow-style loop. Tonight’s cast of would-be saviors includes grieving mother Susan (Temple), teacher friends and co-workers Mark (Peña) and Janet (Beetz), the visibly depressed Ingrid (Richardson), and a handful of unrecognizable faces who are obviously going to die first.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die follows the rag-tag outfit’s mission to halt humanity’s doom while stopping to dig into the ensemble’s past through a series of almost-anthological vignettes. The effect can be halting and occasionally antagonistic to the film’s forward momentum, but the individual flashbacks are among the strongest material in the movie and often its funniest. We watch Susan attempt to recover from her son’s death in a school shooting, Mark and Janet struggle to teach in a school overrun by phone-obsessed teens, and Ingrid’s Wi-Fi allergy sours a promising romance. Each section effectively parodies one disconcerting element of modern society or another, but as with any anthology, some parts shine more than others, lending the film a sense of unevenness and often pulling focus from the primary mission.

Nevertheless, the film remains zany, poignant, and most importantly funny throughout. Not every element sings – and the more action-set-piecey the movie gets, the smaller it ultimately feels in scale – but it delivers on its primary mission: to have a laugh at the absurdity of the present while issuing a very serious warning about an apocalyptic future we seem determined to meet halfway.

CONCLUSION: Gore Verbinski’s ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ is an over-the-top action-comedy with an impressive ensemble that taps into modern anxieties about screen time and A.I., delivering sharp satire and genuine laughs, even if its action beats struggle to match the film’s comic bite.