Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
(dir. Gore Verbinski)
By: Adam Freed
A lot has happened in the nine years since Gore Verbinski directed a film. The most visible change that society has undergone is, without question, the frightening pace with which technology has wrapped its digital tentacles around the minds of its youth. This startling change is visible in every child clutching an illuminated screen in restaurants all over the world. Dinner tables that used to be a place for community and connection have become the hole where conversation comes to die one neverending video loop at a time. Enter Verbinkski (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Rango) and writer Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters) who offer forth and endlessly entertaining and deeply horrifying dark satire on the state of tech reliance, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
Verbinski’s scathing evisceration on the state of big business’ infiltration of brain real estate will be easily dismissed by those who don’t consider 8 hours of screen time per day a problem. For everyone else, this is likely the most topically relevant, and comedically frightening film since Mike Judge’s prophetic satire Idiocracy (2006). For everyone who brushed aside Judge as an alarmist two decades ago, only needs to take a look at the current political and cultural landscape of America to see that a great deal of biting truth can be disguised as jest. To the credit of Verbinski’s film, it may take nowhere near as long for even the most cartoonish events of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die to come to roost. While some of the more chaotic and disjointed moments buried in the film’s second act do not land entirely, Verbinkski’s satire is an unmistakably resonant commentary on the current and future state of tech reliance.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die rockets to a start in its opening scene as a disheveled man armed with a body bomb attempts to accumulate “recruits” to help him on a mission to save the planet from a yet to be invented artificial intelligence destined to take over the human race. The man, who claims to be from the future, is played in unhinged fashion by a delightful Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards, Moon), an actor no stranger to taking performance risks. Rockwell is without question the centerpiece of Verbinkski’s genre defying adventure, but is also the beneficiary of the strength of the film’s ensemble cast. The team of heroes recruited by the futuristic traveler is comprised of high school teachers Mark and Janet, Michael Peña (American Hustle) and Zazie Beetz (Joker, Deadpool 2) respectively, as well as heartbroken loaner Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) and grieving mother Susan (Juno Temple). The strength of Matthew Robinson’s non-linear script is that it allows for each of the story’s ensemble characters to explore their individual backstories. Without this intentionality towards character development, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die may have underplayed its most endearing quality, the humanity found in the individuality of its collective performances. As is, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a messy, turbulent, but ultimately necessary satirical canary in the coal mine, Ignore at one’s own peril.
Target Score 7/10 - Sam Rockwell has rarely been better than he is in Gore Verbinski's menacing black satire about the current and future perils of technology addiction. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is an audacious genre mashup, equal parts terrifying and topical.