We haven’t had a new film from Gore Verbinski for nine years. But the director who brought us the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the nightmare-inducing horror of The Ring (2002), and the Oscar-winning hijinks of Rango (2011) is back in peak form with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. It’s a darkly satirical, inventive, and hugely entertaining time-loop adventure that also serves as a cautionary tale about our widespread online technology addiction.
(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)
Sam Rockwell stars as an otherwise unnamed man who shows up at a Norms diner in Los Angeles looking like a homeless person but claiming to be a time traveler from an apocalyptic future. He’s there to recruit the locals into his war against a rogue AI, although the diner patrons are understandably dubious about his sanity. (“I come from a nightmare apocalypse,” he assures the crowd about his grubby appearance. “This is the height of f*@ing fashion!”)
The fact that he knows everything about the people in the diner is more convincing. It’s his 117th attempt to find the perfect combination of people to join him on his quest. As for what happened to his team on all the previous attempts, “I really don’t like to say it out loud. It’s kind of a morale killer.”
This time, Future Man picks married school teachers Mark (Michael Pena) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), who have just escaped a zombie horde of smartphone-addicted students; Marie (Georgia Goodman), who just wanted a piece of pie; Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother; Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), who is literally allergic to Wi-Fi; Scott (Asim Chaudhry); and Bob (Daniel Barnett), a scout leader. Their mission: to locate a 9-year-old boy who is about to create a sentient AI that will take over the world and usher in the aforementioned nightmare apocalypse. Things start to go haywire pretty quickly. And then things start to get weird.