Dear Moviegoers,
In this era of humanity, where digital saturation in our minute-by-minute lives has become overly problematic, and where "AI" (supposed artificial intelligence) is building to a bursting bubble, there are maybe less than than a handful of films that I would say are meeting the moment in satire and skepticism. Ready Player One, for example, was a nightmarish backdoor dystopia under the veil of intellectual property joy, though ultimately its potential cautionary message was buried as inconsequential to the overall adventure of the piece. I could be waxing silly here, but that's just how I feel.
And, with how I feel about Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, I could be trolling seriously. Director Gore Verbinski's return to filmmaking after an extended break has produced something of true consequence, something with comedic bite and profound imagination. Here, confusion and hope are used as weapons against an inevitable future of sleeping zombies and decayed landscapes, even if to be successful in saving us, we have to try and try again.
The great Sam Rockwell (not a dancing fool in this one) begins the film by entering the fray via time travel, arriving at a late-night diner somewhere in modern-day Los Angeles. Covered in garbage bags and looking haggard, his man with no name (so to speak) monologues of a danger to everything and everyone in the form of an anti-Christ level AI program, that'll trick the world into accepting the virtual to achieve control over the natural. He forms a makeshift team of mostly ordinary patrons - some volunteer, a few are just picked - to make a trip across town to disable and reform the technology, before things go zenith.
The team, scared and highly uncertain of what's happening, has been plucked from their own experiences with digital takeovers, involving scary teenagers armed with smartphones, to clones that walk and talk like living advertisements, to everyday detachments toward school shootings, and, in the end, abandonment of reality itself. Everything is illuminated by these character vignettes and those Groundhog Day-style moments where Rockwell goes through the motions, expecting both defeat and having to repeat everything again and again (through returning to the same diner, at the same time).
It's a whip-smart and clever movie, where absurdity reigns, and anything is permitted to happen at any given moment. Sure, there are bits of tried and kinda true repeated tropes that hit the ending over the head like a brick, but the film's great accomplishment is in delivering surprise after surprise, even subverting a finale that almost dovetails into rah-rah familiarity - something that flips near-subservience for an expectation that moviegoers have been trained for, and goes for freshness over staleness.
Ladies and gentlemen, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is the first somewhat mainstream-ish great flick of the year. It also accomplishes a Ready Player One level of scope with a fraction of the budget and an amped-up rush of screenwriting. It gets the assignment. It meets our moment. It's not a challenge, but rather an escape, as some of the best blockbusters are. Funny through and through, darkly strange, and absolutely committed. To the loony bin that is our lives. 5/5
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is currently playing in theaters.
For more, feel free to peruse my coverage of this year's SF IndieFest.
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