Del and Mladen review ‘Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die’

Image courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.

“Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” Starring Sam Rockwell as Future Man, Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid, Juno Temple as Susan, Mark Peña as Mark, Zazie Beets as Janet, and Artie Wilkinson-Hunt as the AI boy. Directed by Gore Verbinski. 2 hours, 14 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: Is he a man from the future as he claims, or just some off-the-street, attention-seeking lunatic? Either way, he’s burst into a Los Angeles diner seeking volunteers to help him defeat an AI hellbent on making zombies of us all.

Spoilers: Knowing Mladen, almost certainly.

Del’s take

Minutes before “Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” began, and as we sat through interminable assaults of probably AI-created and enabled advertising, I was ranting to Mladen about how technology – primarily “smart” phones – are exacerbating America’s intellectual laziness and ignorance. Then along comes this movie and holy cow! Déjà vu all over again.

That’s the thesis of “Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die”: Mobile phones, the internet, technology, and all the movies/TV/music/internet/advertising and other distracting digital crap are transforming Americans into mindless zombies incapable of thinking and feeling. I so agree with that thesis. I mean, c’mon. SWEDEN – you know, that country sandwiched between Norway and Finland – is doing away with its “digital-first” approach to education and investing hundreds of millions of kronor in books, pencils and paper tablets to reverse what it calls declining literacy and the ability to focus. In America, where declining literacy and the ability to focus are celebrated as superpowers, the idiotification process is light years ahead of Sweden’s. How else could we have elected an anal polyp like Donald Trump?

“Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” begins with a weirdo (Sam Rockwell) bursting into an L.A. diner to announce the end of the world is imminent. He needs volunteers to help him battle a rogue AI being developed by an also weird 9-year-old kid. Fail to comply and he’ll detonate a bomb strapped to his chest. Two women – Ingrid and Susan – offer to join his cause. Future Man conscripts the rest. What follows is a kind of road-trip story (although the trip isn’t very long) with interruptions along the way for various members of this plucky band to relate their personal beefs with technology. Mark and Janet, for instance, are high school substitute teachers who run afoul of zombified, “smart”-phone addicted teenagers. Susan’s son, Darren, is killed in one of the district’s many school shootings and is directed by the traffic-obsessed parents of other school shooting victims to a company that can produce a clone of her son, although Susan should be careful what she wishes for – the clone is an advertising-spewing automaton who is nothing like her real son. Ingrid, who is physically allergic to technology, loses her boyfriend to a VR headset – he asks her why he should remain in this reality when there’s a superior reality – albeit fake – inside the magic box.  

They eventually reach the house of AI boy and things get really weird, with giant horse cats – that’s “horse,” not “house” – eating teenage “smart” phone zombies, and robots cobbled together from tech junk coming to life and menacing anybody who threatens the kid sitting atop a mountain of cast-off cables and junked devices.

“Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” was written by Matthew Robinson and it is whip smart. Clearly Robinson has no love for our AI overlords and it shows in the layered dialogue and events-as-metaphors that transpire in this biting two-hour satire. Rockwell is perfectly cast as the weirdo from the future, as is Richardson as Ingrid, who has a connection to Future Man. ALL the actors seem well suited for their roles. Verbinski’s pacing is frenetic, which matches the movie’s pell-mell tone. My one gripe is the character backstories interrupt the flow. I’m not sure how I’d fix that problem but I need to acknowledge it is a problem. The movie at times reminded me of “The Matrix” and at other times “Groundhog Day” but not to worry – there’s plenty of original content to keep the audience engaged.

I don’t think it’s an A film because of the structural problem I referenced earlier, but I do think it’s a B+ film and that’s what I’m going with. It’s nice to see somebody – ANYBODY – in Hollywood trying to do something that isn’t a retread, prequel or sequel. You’ll need brains to enjoy “Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die.” I’m supposing there are still a few of you out there.

Oh, and remember: Before the movie starts, please silence your “smart” phones.

Mladen’s take

I am Ingrid without the nosebleed. Let me explain.

Ingrid of “Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” gets a nosebleed when she gets too close to junk technology such as cell phones, tablets, and portable video game players. She’s allergic to the screens, microprocessors, and lithium batteries now shaping our lives. So am I. Hate them devices, I do. My phone is a hand-me-down from my son. It’s in lockdown mode. My TVs are disconnected from the internet. I’m blowing away Rippers in Borderlands 4 in solo campaign mode offline. I uploaded the game using, get this, a disc.

Also, I’m no longer a newspaper reporter because I saw the handwriting-on-the-screen some 19 years ago when that new fangled contraption called the Internet started taking control. The hell I was going to work the Military Affairs beat to get validated facts when my bosses were throwing all that information on the Net for free because they, and the rest of society, were unable or unwilling to regulate the tech. Pretty soon after I left, facts and objectivity started losing to conjecture and opinion, an ongoing, unstoppable phenomenon produced by, then, “citizen reporters,” yesterday, “influencers,” and today, “Large Language Models.” I saw what we’re now facing coming a long time ago. Gee-whiz connectivity copulating with gee-whiz gadgets to produce ignorance, immorality, and lies by the byte.

“Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” simply confirms what we all know, a vast majority of mankind loves bullshit and AI is making access to bullshit ever more convenient. But, don’t let that discourage you from seeing this A of a movie. GLHFDD is funny. A bit violent. It rocks with real instruments.

All the acting is good but there are standouts.

Rockwell as Future Man is damn near perfect. Sardonic and truthful. Focused but caring. Realistic though chasing a pure fantasy, regulation of the AI industry and its ghastly algorithm-driven platforms because they contort then twist then invert then bend reality so that it’s impossible to discern the actual from the programmed.

Richardson as Ingrid is as good as Rockwell playing his role. Her unshakeable faith that people prefer real reality more than virtual reality. Her heartbreak when her boyfriend tells her, over the dinner that he cooked, that he has decided to roll his life into a computer program that generates a nicer culture is palpable.

Temple as Susan is very convincing as a distraught and grief-stricken mother trying to find solace amid a society that’s only interested in making money from her boy’s death. Her expressions of disbelief, befuddlement, and vexation are as good as any I’ve seen on the screen.

If GLHFDD’s Future Man from the AI-mutilated future disturbs my dinner at a restaurant by accusing me of complicity in turning mankind into a tool for computers, I’ll have only one riposte. “Yes, sir, but I was an unwilling co-conspirator.” Would you be able to say that about yourself? Or have you already, and intentionally, sacrificed your fate, your individuality, and your capacity to think at the altar of Altman? Yeah, I thought so.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.