Gore Verbinski (making his first film since the underrated “A Cure for Wellness”) is finally back with the playful, sharp “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” a movie that takes common concerns about an A.I.-driven future and spins them into a timely action-comedy about how the potential end of the world might be closer than we think. It’s a bit haphazard in both structure and messaging, but there’s a creative spark under this one that’s missing from a lot of Hollywood products of late. And it comes along at a truly historic time for the form, in that Hollywood uses more and more A.I. every day. The call is coming from inside the house. You’ll probably even see an AI-generated ad before your screening of this one.
A perfectly-cast Sam Rockwell plays an unnamed man who bursts into a crowded L.A. diner one night garbed in plastic and with wires all over his body, rambling about how the world is going to end momentarily. He needs people to come with him right now if they want to live. He’s kinda the anti-Terminator, one of those people who you see screaming about the apocalypse on the street corner, but you don’t really pause to take him seriously. However, this traveler from the future seems to know more than he should about the residents of this particular diner. He tells them it’s because he’s tried this over and over again in a sort of futuristic “Groundhog Day.” When the night goes wrong, and it always goes wrong, he can push a button and reboot it all over again. As often happens, a collection of what seems like ordinary Los Angelenos ends up going with our intrepid time traveler—maybe tonight is the one in which they can finally defeat the machines.
Writer Matthew Robinson then flashes back to fill in the back stories on how these intrepid souls got to this key moment in history. We see how schoolteachers Mark (Michael Peña) and Janey (Zazie Beetz) have been fighting back against the proliferation of technology in the classrooms that they’re desperately trying to maintain a human grip on. We meet a single mom named Susan (Juno Temple) who lost her son in a school shooting but has been given a creepy chance to reunite with him via technology. And there’s a young woman named Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) who not only has a “Better Call Saul”-esque allergy to technology but has watched as her boyfriend got sucked into virtual worlds instead of exploring real ones. All of these people have seen their lives upended by technology in a way that makes them ideal warriors in the fight to come, and so they end up following the Man in the plastic coat.
At times, the mini-“Black Mirror” episodic structure of Robinson’s script can derail momentum. Just as we’re getting involved with the escape from the diner, “Good Luck” goes back in time, and that naturally does something to the pace that Verbinski can only half-recover. These backstories are thematically effective, but there could have been a better way to incorporate them into a narrative that doesn’t lose momentum every time they arise. It’s a credit to Verbinski’s always energetic direction that the film doesn’t fall apart completely. He once again brings a sort of Looney Tunes mania to a script that could have been leaden doomsaying. It’s harder than it looks to make a fun movie about how A.I. is going to destroy us all. Of course, it helps to have a performer as charismatic as Rockwell in the lead. The whole cast seems to be on the same page.
And that page is furious. It’s wrapped in an original, funny piece of entertainment, but this is also undeniably a warning. When one looks back on the various threads of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” it’s clear to see a message that A.I. is dangerously hollow on every level. It seeks to replicate human experience without the messy things that actually make it human. We’ve been watching terrifying visions of the future since before Sarah Connor gave birth to humanity’s savior, but the truth is that A.I. represents a very current fear instead of a vision of what could be.
As more filmmakers reckon with how A.I. will shape the form, Verbinski and Robinson are asking how it’s also shaping things like parenthood, education, and even grief. We’re told more and more that A.I. is going to invade every corner of our lives, if it hasn’t already. And while Verbinski’s film only rarely resorts to preaching, its stance is clear: We’re all gonna need some really good luck.
