Film Review: ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Wants You To Know Your Phone Is The Problem
by Paul Ceruti
Gore Verbinski: poor man’s David Fincher or rich man’s Paul W.S. Anderson? Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die sees Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) reclaiming the director’s chair after a ten-year hiatus. It’s also his first independently produced film, budgeted at a modest (for him) $20 million. Does it mark his bold return to cinema?
Despite able lead performances from Sam Rockwell, Juno Temple, and Haley Lu Richardson, it all feels a little second-rate. Things begin promisingly when Rockwell bursts into a diner with a bomb strapped to his chest. Proclaiming himself humankind’s future savior — think Kyle Reese in The Terminator — he exhorts to the crowd that at this very moment, across town, an evil, all-powerful AI is awakening. Only he and a select crew of diner patrons can stop it — at least the ones capable of looking up from their phones.
Yes, it’s another middle-aged man’s screed against the kids and their danged phones. I’m not taking the side of the phones here, but in the year 2026, the film’s preachy, in-your-face tone is more grating than rousing. Its pro-humanity message is also difficult to square with all the casual cruelty the film visits upon children, the unhoused, and fat people. GL, HF, DD is heavily indebted in content and style to Everything, Everywhere, All At Once but shares none of its wide-ranging empathy. The moment the movie lost me was when it used a mother’s grief in the aftermath of a school shooting as a punchline, and even that storyline ends on a confusingly pro-AI note.
Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz round out the film’s big-name talent, although the script doesn’t give them much to do in the grand finale (all the non-white actors are curiously sidelined in the third act). This isn’t a serious film, and with a runtime of over two hours, it’s not much for dumb fun either.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is in theaters now.
