Thanks, I did, I didn’t.
Since most of us love “Pulp Fiction,” let’s begin “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” in a Los Angeles diner where a stranger comes in and holds everyone at gunpoint. Except let’s got be a homeless appearance, where he comes in wearing rags and has bombs strapped to his body. To the customers, he looks that way, but in reality, he’s a man from the future who controls his own time warps. It looks like he’s about to activate a bomb, but he really he’s going back in time to save humanity. But if he’s dressed that way and acts like a crazy person, then it would take a guy like Sam Rockwell to bring on the wisecracks and attitude about it.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” was directed by Gore Verbinski in his most exciting entry since “Rango,” and he provides the film with an elevating sense of humor and creativity, and he acknowledges that there are those who wish to see something different within the genre, instead of always taking the easy way out.
The reason why Rockwell plays the Terminator-the Man from the Future as the credits label him-is because A.I. has destroyed half of humanity. To clarify, half the people are dead, while the other half are basically glued to V.R. And he needs a team of misfits to help him on his mission. They consist of fellow teachers and lovers Mark (Michael Pena) and Janet (Zazie Beatz), the emotionless Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), the grieving mother Susan (Juno Temple), the Uber driver Scott (Asim Chaudhry), the Boy Scout leader Bob (Daniel Barnett), and the overworked Samantha (Dominique Maher). But only the flashbacks have time for the teachers dealing with students glued to their phones, Susan entering the cloning genre, and Ingrid being allergic to phones and Wi-Fi.
Regarding the Rockwell character appearing to be activating the bomb, he’s practically setting himself in a time warp. As far, as we know, he seems to have more control over that than Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” Tom Cruise in “Edge of Tomorrow,” or Jessica Rothe in “Happy Death Day.” And the movie chooses not to annoy us with how many times the hero has to repeat the scene, but to allow Rockwell to level the playing field and just go with whatever his character is trying to accomplish. Some characters have to get wiped out, and at one point, he’s like: “You could have told me that before BLANK got killed?!” They just have to keep going and try to make it to the endgame, while dealing with a variety of colorful killers.
The cloning genre Susan enters regards her son being killed in a school shooting. I’m not very fond of parents cloning their kids, when their real ones are dead, but I guess it’s out of grievance, and Temple displays that quite well. And this one does has more ads and less idiot characters (think back to “Morgan” or “Replicas”).
We also must acknowledge how people are glued to their phones and how some think VR is as exciting as the real world. And Richardson’s emotions towards that are expressed sincerely and more committed than Millie Bobby Brown’s in “The Electric State.” Before we get to the basis of her state, we’re able to find a sense of humor in her, and it’s challenging because of her apparent allergies to today’s technology (Study shows Wi-Fi doesn’t cause allergies, just stress, while cellphones can cause rashes). And therefore, she and Rockwell deliver on the comedy.
Regarding the fight against A.I., I can’t really spoil the ending, but we do acknowledge that certain movies are made in a certain time period (“Breakdown: 1975” examined the ending of “Chinatown” a bit). We also know that there are those willing to fight against it, like James Cameron, Guillermo Del Toro, and myself. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is a brilliant satire and Sci-Fi movie on that level, kudos to Verbinski and writer Matthew Robinson (“The Invention of Lying”). And this is me writing this review. Not A.I.
