In Gore Verbinski's absurdist AI sci-fi satire"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die,"a strange unnamed man (Sam Rockwell) steps into a Los Angeles diner and declares that he's from the future. "All of this is going to go horribly wrong," he says.
Norm's diner on La Cienega might not seem like the most likely battleground to decide the fate of the world, but that's exactly what this fellow — bearded, with a wreath of wires around his head and a bomb strapped under a translucent rain coat — contends.
He is there, while customers sip coffee and bite into an omelet, to enlist recruits for the resistance. In the future, he says, people have entirely stopped participating in life. "It all started with morning phone time," he says. In the enjoyably oddball, forebodingly bleak and ridiculously plausible "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die," a ragtag group fights a coming AI apocalypse across a handful of nondescript West Hollywood blocks.
It's been argued that with the onset of AI, storytellers need to get weirder, more imaginative, more human. The Daniels'"Everything Everywhere All at Once,"which likewise married cosmic and mundane, was animated partly in this spirit. "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die," scripted by Matthew Robinson, isn't that creative, and it grows more wayward the deeper it goes into its too-lengthy runtime. But there's a bonkers charm to how Verbinski tackles contemporary anxieties head on.
This is the first film in a decade from Verbinski, the director of "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Mouse Hunt" and one of the better animated features of the century, "Rango." But after a few flops ("The Lone Ranger,""A Cure for Wellness"), Verbinski cobbled together a more modest budget for this independent production.
The lack of scale is noticeable in the climatic moments of "Good Luck," but Verbinski's penchant for lush detail and movie-reference onslaught remains. Our central figure is a hobo prophet who looks straight out of Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King," only more tech-enabled. He has a countdown on his watch, and the imminent attack on the diner means time is extremely short.
He's done this before, he says, 117 times, to be precise. His speech is well-rehearsed, but Rockwell's future man more resembles an actor who's been doing the same play for too long. His "Groundhog Day"-like time loop has drained him of optimism. He's left to desperately and cavalierly keep trying various combinations of recruits in the hope they survive, escape and do something that will prevent the AI apocalypse. It's a remarkably well-suited role for Rockwell, whose stumbling charm lifts "Good Luck" nearly as much as Johnny Depp did in "Pirates of the Caribbean."
"Good Luck" never quite matches the electricity of its diner-scene opening, but as a group forms, the movie ropes in other characters whose backstories make for fablelike flashbacks. They play like mini "Black Mirror" episodes.
One volunteer, a single mom named Susan (Juno Temple), is still mourning the death of her son from a school shooting, which in this reality has grown into such a common occurrence that scientists have developed clones to replace deceased children. The clones aren't quite right, though. They all say "Thank you for your service" and the cheaper ones come with ads. (This is the movie's darkest and best joke.)
Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) is allergic to phones and Wi-Fi. Her story includes a boyfriend who matches her in a technology-free life until a virtual reality headset leads him to drop out of real life, entirely. Also in the mix are a pair of high school teachers (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) whose students never look up from their phones.
As in most sci-fi movies, the set up of "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" is better than its follow through. But the movie has a kinetic kick, and you could argue that it's obsessed with the right things. We could usemore moviessimilarly engaged. Even if not every part of this particular mission is a success, like the numbers game of Rockwell's protagonist, eventually one will get through.
"Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die," a Briarcliff Entertainment release, is in theaters Friday. It's rated R by the Motion Picture Association for pervasive language, violence, some grisly images and brief sexual content. Running time: 134 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
