Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple
While Hollywood insists on injecting pro-AI propaganda into its recent crop of sci-fi movies, director Gore Verbinski has stepped outside the studio system to make the resolutely anti-AI sci-fi adventure Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. Scripted by Matthew Robinson, this is the work of two men who are clearly very angry with a society that seems all too happy to sell its soul to the machines. But there's a difference between being opposed to AI and simply being a luddite. Verbinski and Robinson don't seem to understand why the general public has concerns over AI. Their ideas about the threat of Artificial Intelligence are detached from reality and their movie plays more like a product of the '80s than one made during a time when AI is actually part of our lives.
Verbinski and Robinson subvert the traditional time loop concept by switching our POV to that of the characters in a time loop movie who don't realise they're in a time loop movie (think if Groundhog Day was centred on Andie MacDowell rather than Bill Murray). The movie opens in a nondescript diner where the patrons are disturbed by the arrival of a man (Sam Rockwell) dressed like Godard's Professor Pluggy from King Lear. The man claims he has travelled from an apocalyptic future and has but a few hours to save humanity from an imminent AI takeover. It's his 117th attempt, but he's hoping this time he'll pick just the right group of diners to aid him in his quest to stop a nine-year-old boy from completing a software programme that will launch the AI-pocalypse.
In the manner of William Friedkin's Sorcerer and TV's Lost, Good Luck... gives The Man from the Future's unwitting accomplices their own stories told in flashbacks that explain why they might be just the right people for this unique assignment. Each story plays like a segment from a horror anthology, albeit left open-ended for the characters' narrative arcs to intertwine with that of Rockwell's time traveller. Married teachers Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) are unable to get through to their phone-addicted pupils, who fall under the spell of a mysterious triangle that appears on their phone screens. This segment is a fun reversal of the evil teacher dynamics of movies like Class of 1999 and The Faculty, and its ideas could have fuelled a standalone feature.
Next up is the story of Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother offered a unique way to be reunited with her son, who was murdered in a school shooting. The segment is commendably incensed at America's baffling indifference to the problem of school shootings, but its core is a mash-up of two episodes of Black Mirror that already covered these themes in greater detail. Finally we have the tale of Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a young woman who is literally allergic to the internet. When she meets a young man who refuses to engage with modern technology, Ingrid thinks she has found Mr Right, but the arrival of a mysterious package scuppers their relationship.
These individual segments are amusing enough in their own right, but some of their ideas are later discarded as the main plot unfolds, leaving us with the impression that Robinson had three rejected Black Mirror scripts gathering dust and decided to shoehorn them into one movie. Given each of the diners TMFTF selects have essentially already lived through their own dystopian sci-fi adventures prior to his arrival, it's odd how none of them think to mention it to him. Don't they feel everything they've experienced might be relevant to his quest?
The main plotline too often plays out like it's making up its narrative on the fly. The rules of this world are frustratingly oblique, leading to many gaps in logic. The kid responsible for ushering in the AI apocalypse appears to have supernatural abilities like the power to read people's thoughts and unleash Ai creations on the real world (leading to a scene that shamelessly rips off the climax of 1984's Ghostbusters), so why does he hire a pair of bumbling hitmen to foil TMFTF?
Aside from some fun with the idea of AI misunderstanding a prompt, resulting in the introduction of a memorably novel monster, Good Luck... never weaves our real world concerns into its anti-AI narrative. One of the biggest AI-related worries is that of deepfakes and the idea that we can no longer trust our own eyes, but Verbinski never broaches this ripe-for-tension subject (we'll have to wait for the release of the excellent sci-fi thriller Appofeniacs). His film's ideas about an AI dystopia are as dated as The Terminator, and much of Good Luck... is simply an old man shouting at a cloud (or "the cloud") he doesn't seem to really understand. Too often the movie aims its digs at low-hanging fruit, especially with its tired stereotype of zombified teens who can't look away from their phones (if anything, it's Verbinski's own generation who have been most brainwashed by the internet).
If you're looking for a sharp satire of AI and our increasing subservience to technology, this ain't it. The best way to watch Good Luck... is to pretend it was made in 1987. As a Buckaroo Banzai style sci-fi caper it's quite entertaining. Even if Verbinski and Robinson seem clueless about what they're trying to critique here, the cast understands the tone they're trying to strike. The heart of the film is Richardson's Ingrid, an outsider figure for all of us who hate how Ally Sheedy's goth was turned into a conformist drone at the end of The Breakfast Club. Rockwell is his usual manic self, while Temple continues to grow as a performer following her recent revelatory turn on TV's Fargo.
Verbinski's films tend to suffer from pacing issues, but he keeps everything moving at a zip here, and one sequence deploys his signature Rube Goldberg action to great effect with a car making its way down the levels of a multi-storey park. What's most surprising is just how angry Good Luck... is, with a real venom towards modern society and a couple of shocking moments of violence. But too much of that anger is directed at a target the movie doesn't understand, and it's unlikely to change anyone's opinion on AI.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is in US/CAN cinemas from February 13th and UK/ROI cinemas from February 20th.
