Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die (Movie Review)

 

Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Matthew Robinson

Rated R

A group of random people are eating in a diner when a weirdo (Sam Rockwell) who looks like a homeless guy decked out in wires, explosives, and all kinds of computer circuitry and mother boards, barges in to interrupt the regular lives. He says he's from the future thats's gone all wrong due to an AI that took over the world a la Terminator's Skynet. It's up to him and a ragtag group of volunteers from the diner to see that that does not happen. Well, volunteers if you count the threat of Rockwell suicide bombing himself as incentive. Problem is, he's done it over a hundred times before and always failed. He knows that somehow there is a correct combination of people from the diner that will make his mission succeed but finding the right combo is nigh impossible.

He gets some volunteers but now the trick is to get out of a diner surrounded by cops that seem to shoot on sight. It's at this point we start to flashback to the lives the volunteers led up to this point in the story and find out they are not so normal really. All of them have gotten into some pretty scary situations recently that show the AI of the future is already starting to reach its tendrils into the technologies we all are addicted to, such as our phones. And of course the AI is going to do everything it can to stop the group of humans, including killing them!

 I knew NOTHING about this movie before seeing it. I knew Sam Rockwell was in it but really I don't even know who HE is. It's just a name I've heard. From the start the film gave me a strong Terry Gilliam Time Bandits feel. By that I mean, a cheap looking B movie that covered its low production veneer with high concepts. In this case, Verbinski hits you over the head with a rubber mallet about how bad the internet is for us. How phones control us. How AI is going to destroy the world. Well, I think we already know all this. Verbinski longs for a world where these things did not exist. Sadly, for anyone past Generation X, this world will not be known again. 

If you can get by the corniness of the film, there is some fun to be had. It almost feels like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure with Rockwell being the dungeon master because he already knows a lot of the possible outcomes and how the volunteers will react. You get excited wondering what's around the next corner or where the plot is going to go and what exactly is going on. While the movie raises interesting questions, it never really delivers in the payoff to the extent that the audience wants. But the adventure getting there is intriguing enough to keep you watching. 

The funniest subplot was Micheal Pena playing a substitute teacher who gets chased by zombie-like high schoolers after touching one of their phones. The other back stories we get are more tinged with drama such as Haley Lu Richardson's losing her boyfriend to a VR game or another volunteer who loses her son in a school shooting. 

The commentary on today's society can be a bit hammy but Verbinski is very sincere in what he's trying to say even though no imaginative solutions are offered. In face, his viewpoint seems to be that we can battle all we want, but the war is already over. We have lost. Don't get me wrong, the director mixes a lot of humor and camp in with the bleakness of his vision. Like I said, the vibe of Time Bandits is strong with its quirkiness and comedy, but also its darkness. 

Was this a good movie? Not sure. Was it fun, interesting, intriguing and worth seeing? Yes.

My Grade: C