Movie Review: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die

This is a movie you go into expecting it to be super weird, and still end up having your jaw hit the floor at times because you honestly didn’t think it would go in THAT direction, or get THAT weird. And that, my friend, is a compliment.

On the surface, you could summarize the plot as a “super weird” take on The Terminator. Guy goes back in time to try and stop an AI Apocalypse.

But this movie has a lot more going on than that. It is a dark satire of our present day. If you’ve seen the trailer and are already sold on it, stop reading right now and go see it. Trust me, you WANT to be surprised by.

If you’ve already seen it, or need convincing, let’s continue.

This movie isn’t just about AI. It’s a criticism of technology in general and how it affects our lives, exaggerating it to the point of lunacy. How phones are affecting attention spans. How desensitized people have become to school shootings. The lengths people will go to get normalcy back in their lives, and what we are willing to sacrifice to get it.

While it is set in what feels like the present day, it is also “Fifteen minutes in the future” (to bring back a term the Max Headroom TV show used to great effect). That is, everything feels like now, except when it’s not. The leaps in tech are often hidden, such as an unmarked store that caters to parents who have lost their children in school shootings by replacing them… sorta.

Yeah, make no mistake, this movie goes dark, but whether I was laughing or cringing, I was always enjoying myself. And despite its pessimism about where we are and where we’re going, there is a core of optimism about us as individuals being willing to do something about it.

The movie is told in a non-linear way, jumping back to show us what happened to the main characters a couple of days before the movie starts. I always enjoy creative storytelling like that, especially when those events dovetail back into the main narrative.

However, despite the excellent storytelling being full of surprises and the unexpected, you can also predict many of the story beats. I suppose you could say it’s a predictable time travel story told in a very unpredictable way. Certain twists, the climax, and the denouement are the sort of things genre-savvy viewers will see coming a mile off.

I don’t say that as a criticism. Plenty of great movies are like that. Nobody expected the Death Star to fire before the Rebels could blow it up. It’s just that for me it stands out a bit more because there is so much crazy and unexpected in it that happens along the way.

Another criticism-but-not-really-a-criticism is how the action sometimes plays out. In a more serious movie, you might have issues with some of those beats in terms of feeling real, or taking advantage of the consequences of actions logically. You know, the usual “Why didn’t they…?” or “I would have…!” backseat driving that annoys people when they say it out loud while the movie is playing (whistles innocently).

But that’s a quibble, and in something as unhinged as this movie, easily forgivable. You’re here for the ride and to see where it takes you.

While director Gore Verbinski deserves tons of credit for his imaginative visuals, let’s not forget the writer. Matthew Robinson wrote the screenplay, and therefore is responsible for the insanity that Gore brings to life on the screen. Sam Rockwell was a huge motivating factor for me to see this, since I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by a movie he chose to be in, but the entire cast is great. No notes.

Side note: This was my Valentine’s Day movie with my wife… well, technically my Friday the Thirteenth movie with her, but the stars aligned in such a way that seeing this on opening day turned out to be the better choice for us both. The buses were perfectly on time, we arrived with time to spare for the movie. Heck, we even went to the Old Spaghetti Factory afterwards and got a seat with no waiting. Things went so perfectly that day I was looking over my shoulder for what kind of karmic backlash was lurking in the shadows. Or if I might actually be in the simulation.