Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

by Mike McGranaghan

A crazed-looking man (Sam Rockwell) walks into a Los Angeles diner wearing a ratty old knit cap wrapped in wires and a jacket with tubes protruding from it. He has no name but claims to be from the future. Furthermore, he says that he has returned to this diner many times before, hoping to find the right combination of volunteers to help him save the world from an artificial intelligence program that goes rogue. This opening scene from Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die sets the stage for the freewheeling, unpredictable adventure that’s about to unfold.

The time traveler succeeds in convincing a few people to join him. Single mom Susan (Juno Temple) seems to believe he might be telling the truth. Married teachers Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) have seen strange things occurring at the school where they work and wonder if those things have a connection to the man. Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) is a punker who signs on just to see what will happen.

I wouldn’t want to ruin the fun by describing what occurs next, other than to say that there is indeed a dire threat to the planet. The screenplay feels like writer Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters) pulled a bunch of random ideas from a hat, then found a way to string them all together. In the best possible manner, that is. The film has a quality where one quirky occurrence builds to the next, even quirkier occurrence without losing its own internal logic. When the big reveal of the threat arrives, it’s funny while unexpectedly putting a foot in reality. In other words, the story takes a real-life phenomenon to an extreme.

Director Gore Verbinski started off making cool, stylish films like Mouse Hunt and The Ring. He entered the realm of blockbusters with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which was popular if not exactly the best use of his skewed cinematic vision. After the disaster that was 2013’s The Lone Ranger, he seems intent on getting back to basics. This is a perfect project for that goal. Verbinski gives the movie visual flourish, along with a frantic pace that he manages to never lose control of. The untamed, anything-can-happen vibe provides constant entertainment.

It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Sam Rockwell in the role of the time-traveler. He’s got a gift for finding humanity inside profoundly eccentric characters. With someone else in the part, we might not care about this guy’s mission. Rockwell infuses him with enough sincerity to shine through the kookiness. Of the supporting players, Haley Lu Richardson makes the strongest impression, mixing Ingrid’s punk attitude with an underlying vulnerability.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is overlong at 134 minutes. Considering the movie is on “ten” the entire time, that length can be intermittently overwhelming. By the end, you’re exhausted. Then again, the exhaustion comes from laughing and savoring the entertaining madness taking place onscreen. In this case, too much of a good thing isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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