Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die - Review: A.I. (Anarchistic Intelligence)

 

Whoever said the technology apocalypse can’t be fun apparently never told director Gore Verbinski (“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “Rango”). His first film in over a decade, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” wants to take on the whole AI apocalypse subgenre with reckless abandon. Paired with writer Matthew Robinson (“The Invention of Lying,” “Love & Monsters”) and a stacked cast, he’s inviting audiences to put down their phones and embrace the madness.

The film stars Sam Rockwell (“Jojo Rabbit,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) as an unnamed man from the future seeking volunteers in a late-night diner to help him fight the impending AI apocalypse. He finds those volunteers in Mark, played by Michael Peña (“Ant-Man,” “Crash”), Janet, played by Zazie Beetz (“Atlanta,” “Deadpool 2”), Susan, played by Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso,” “The Offer”), Scott, played by Asim Chaudhry (“People Just Do Nothing,” “The Sandman”), and Ingrid, played by Haley Lu Richardson (“After Yang,” “Support the Girls”).

Rockwell leads his ragtag bunch with a performance jam packed with manic genius. It’s as if he stepped right out of a cartoon, imbuing this fearless man from the future with a gung-ho attitude and sense of willie Bugs Bunny charm. He carries the entire film and makes each wink and jab a little better than it already is. The supporting cast are all great as well. Peña and Beetz have good chemistry as a teacher couple, Temple is a surprisingly layered delight, and Chaudhry is an amusing presence in the madness. However, Richardson steals the show. There’s so much depth to Ingrid that she becomes the film’s co-lead, juxtaposing Rockwell’s can-do attitude with a more grounded approach. The pair are simple fantastic together.

Verbinski takes full advantage of this scrappy film’s lower budget, setting much of the adventure in dingy alleyways and abandoned houses. As they trip along this tale, it gives things a handmade quality that makes it feel more purposeful. Often times people describe a film with a bunch of actors joking and having fun as seeming like it was shot over a week. While this certainly has that quality, it's because things feel so shoestring. Each moment of action feels big because of the characters and stakes established, not a multi-100-million-dollar budget.

For as gleeful and hopeful as Rockwell’s character is, the film is chock full of some delirious dark subject matter. It takes it all in stride and with a smile, allowing this satirical edge to be pushed to its absolute limits. It’s not hard to see at times why a major studio might have passed on this material, but it imbues itself with a wink and smile and runs away with mischievous glee. It isn’t just that the film is having fun with the ideas, it's that the ideas that Verbinski and Robinson are positing aren’t too hard to see possibly coming true one day… unfortunately.

But at the core of the film is a massive beating heart. Regardless of the impending AI doom, scrappy filmmaking, or deep dark humor, the central core of the film becomes remarkably hopeful and pure as things progress. It works because it feels genuine; not polished or saccharine but coming from an honest place. It recontextualizes most of the film by the end, even down to the central idea of Rockwell’s time looping future man and leaves things on a far more hopeful note than one might expect from a tale as heightened and timely as this one.

“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is the sort of movie people will look back on in a decade as a Bonafide cult hit. It’s got all the wackiness and inventive dark comedy one would need to tackle this kind of subject with a hearty dose of genuine human emotion and inventiveness. This is the sort of film, carried by its cast, that wants to look oblivion right in the face and give it bunny ears, laughing all the way home. If you can stomach the dark comedy, you’ll be more than happy to go along for the ride. 4.5/5