'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die' review: An earnest f*ck you to AI

Hollywood is currently at war over AI. While studios are looking into using artificial intelligence to draft screenplays, build background actors, and contribute to production design, artists and their guilds are banding together, demanding to keep humanity in the art of movie-making. American filmmaker Gore Verbinski has chosen his side with the anti-AI comedy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. 

Written by The Invention of Lying scribe Matthew Robinson, this sci-fi satire stars Sam Rockwell as an unnamed time traveler from a dystopian future where half of mankind is dead and the other half is obliviously plugged into an enchanting video game, wasting their lives away. Forget the violent overthrows seen in The Terminator or The Matrix. In this vision of an AI-dominated future, humanity is all too willing to surrender ourselves to endless scrolling and enslavement to an AI overlord. That is, unless this grungy time traveler with poor social skills can stop it. 

For reasons unclear, he's come back to our time, specifically to Norms diner in Los Angeles, looking for a team who can help him stop the launch of a ruthless AI tyrant. Lacking the cool swagger of a leather-clad Arnold Schwarzenegger or a trench-coated Keanu Reeves, a trash-draped Rockwell has a hard time recruiting rebels for his bizarre mission. The motley crew he assembles seems more likely to ignore each other on a city bus than save the world. But he'll work with what he's got. And in this wild ride, storied filmmaker Verbinski channels the imaginative action of his Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the haunting atmosphere of A Cure for Wellness, and the unapologetic weird streak of Rango. Simply put, this is one hell of a ride. 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is earnest, ambitious, and wild. 

A motley crew of strangers try to save the world in "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die." Credit: Briarcliff Entertainment

The world presented here is familiar, but with the AI hysteria cranked up as the Man from the Future (as Rockwell is credited) treks through Los Angeles to find the "9-year-old father of AI." With this time traveler are a bewildered couple of school teachers (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz), a fretful mom (Juno Temple), a pie-craving middle-aged woman, a Boy Scout troop leader, an impulsive Uber driver, and a sulking young woman in a princess dress and combat boots (Haley Lu Richardson). Average folk, they will face down an army of entranced teenagers, driven by their phone addiction to carnage. They will be chased by men wearing knitted pig masks. They will face off against AI slop turned towering real-world monster. 

A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Within each action sequence, Verbinski offers a heap of sugar through inventive violence and eyesore AI antagonists. The medicine that must go down includes lectures from the Man from the Future, who rails about how humanity rolled over, accepting what was easy without considering its cost. They laugh at his predictions of a world destroyed. With his grizzled beard, dirt-smudged face, and discombobulated outfit, he looks like any other ranting sidewalk preacher. But as they get closer to the 9-year-old they seek, his words go from mad predictions to eye-popping certainties. And so, with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Verbinski pleads to his audience: We cannot idly sit by as we assume the rise of AI is inevitable. We can shape the future every day in the choices we make about how we engage with such tech. 

Sam Rockwell and Haley Lu Richardson make a great pair.

Robinson's screenplay leaps back and forward in time to build backstories — both the time traveler's and his confused companions — but not all of the cast are smartly utilized. For instance, Peña and Beetz are pitched into a zombie subplot, where their high school students slowly but steadily pursue them, cellphones clutched in hand. Perhaps aiming to be appropriate to the old-school horror this section evokes, the usually charming actors offer flat portrayals that only gain depth as they fall under the influence of the time traveler’s frenzy. By contrast, Temple is a fragile portrait of grief, trembling in between emotional outbursts. Her story is intriguing, yet ultimately feels vexingly thin. 

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Thankfully, Rockwell makes for a mesmerizingly manic leading man. Whether preaching to apathetic diner patrons, battling high-tech antagonists, or snarling at his disorganized teammates, his surly certainty keeps Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die chugging along. Yet it's Richardson who grounds the film. At first disregarded by the Man from the Future, her backstory becomes the strangest and yet the most touching. Where each thread has a touch of Black Mirror horror, blending tech fear with social commentary, hers has a distinctive American sense of defiance. At first, the Man from the future and the "princess" — as he derisively calls her — interact with inexplicable static. But as they face down one danger after another, their chemistry clicks, and this unlikely duo seems destined for an epic climax. 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a bit bloated. 

While there's a lot of fun and thought-provoking satire to be found in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, there's also just a lot of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. Clocking in at two hours and 14 minutes, this adventure gets less rollicking and more ragged. Given the passion in the presentation, you get a sense that every frame is precious to Verbinski, whose three Pirates of the Caribbean movies all come in at over 2 hours long, as did A Cure for Wellness. Still, there are diatribes that begin to feel didactic and action sequences that edge away from exciting into aggravating. Essentially, even after Verbinski's made his point, he's pushing past it. So, even an engaged audience might get restless, eager for what's coming next. 

All in all, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is an exciting entry into the "rise of AI" movies, in no small part because it rejects the idea that defeating the machine — or even the machines themselves — will look cool. Heroism isn't always bullet-time precision and sleek style. Sometimes, this madcap movie suggests, heroism is grungy, petty, and uncool, and requires showing up and getting out of your comfort zone. While Verbinski gets verbose in his execution, there's no denying that Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die offers an entertaining adventure, rich in ideas and imagination. Sure, it gets a bit messy. But it's also exciting to see something so earnest and human and utterly bonkers. 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die opens in theaters Feb. 13.