Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

This anarchic, punk-rock-tinged sci-fi comedy is a surreal flight of fantasy that’s more about mood and big ideas than it is about a traditional plot – it won’t be for everyone, but it’s unlike anything else you’re likely to see this year.

Premise:  When an apparently crazy man (Sam Rockwell) bursts into a late-night diner and claims to be from the future, he announces that he needs to find volunteers to help him prevent the creation of an AI later that night that will destroy the world.

Review:

Although Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die does share a little of its eccentric DNA with the central premise from the 1995 cult classic 12 Monkeys, it’s far more absurd and surreal than even Terry Gilliam’s film was.  With Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, director Gore Verbinski has made a film that is intentionally free-wheeling and anarchic, with a heightened tone that allows the movie to veer off in unexpected directions.

The opening scene sees an unnamed man claiming to be from the future (Sam Rockwell) burst into a late-light diner wearing a plastic raincoat and an eccentric contraption that may or may not be a homemade bomb-vest – and then things only get weirder from there.  The film only plays with the idea that the man may be crazy for a relatively short time, as various patrons of the diner agree (reluctantly or otherwise) to join him on his alleged mission to save the world from the creation of an AI that has already destroyed his future.  After the introductory scenes, the film flips back and forth between following the group's mission, and flashbacks showing why some of the people agreed to the man's apparently crazy request for help.

“…so intentionally weird that it will definitely not be to everyone’s taste…”

The group includes a recently bereaved mother (Juno Temple), a pair of teachers (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz) who have been witnessing their pupils' addiction to social media, a potentially suicidal girl dressed in a princess costume (Haley Lu Richardson), and a sceptical man only playing alone to save himself (Asim Chaudhry).  I don't want to say too much about the characters, as we only learn about them over the course on the film, but I will say that the cast all tune in really well to the heightened and surreal tone of the film.

The movie is so intentionally weird that it will definitely not be to everyone's taste.  It's also fair to say that it wants to talk about so many big ideas – including addiction to technology, human cloning, school shootings, AI, and the nature of reality – that it never really does much more than scratch the surface on any of them.  But again, it's important to remember that this is not a serious film or one that wants to engage in intellectual debates – but it does maybe want to use its humour to have audiences question some of their preconceptions and attitudes – for example, why does US culture just except that regular school shootings are an acceptable and unavoidable part of modern society?

“…balances existential themes with a truly bizarre & surreal plot…”

Balanced against some of these existential themes are some truly bizarre and surreal plot developments, and it's fair to say that this is not necessarily a film in which the plot holds up to logical analysis.  After having watched the film, I'm still not sure that I could explain everything that happened, and I'm sure there are least a handful of major plot holes ... but this is a film that is more about its vibe and tone than it's logical plot coherence, and the dream-like quality of some of the plot elements only heightens the movie's sense of surrealism.

Overall, this film is an oddity that is worth checking out if you're looking for something a little more offbeat than your average mainstream movie, but it was never intended to be something that appealed to everyone.