The reverberations from Everything Everywhere All at Once were slow, but they have at last arrived, at least to some degree, with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, the first movie since that sensation of 2022 to go for a similarly eccentric high concept built on some degree of absurdism with a deeper and very conscious meaning underpinning its world and stakes. It is directed by Gore Verbinski -his first movie in nine years- and it is fittingly wild and silly in the vein of his Pirates of the Caribbean movies (especially the latter two), but its unique concept and stalwart thematic integrity comes courtesy of screenwriter Matthew Robinson. Both, it would seem, have a bone to pick with the technological dependency of the modern world -with A.I. and virtual reality specifically and what it all means for the future of humanity. Their outlook is bleak, but at least there's some fun to be had in the possibly vain effort to amend it.
The movie opens with Sam Rockwell as an unnamed man with a scraggly beard, a sheer plastic cloak, and an apparent explosive device sewn into his heavy-duty clothes arriving at an L.A. restaurant after 10 pm claiming to be from the future. Holding everyone hostage under threat of detonation, he expounds in broad strokes on how technological dependence has destroyed the future and he is here to recruit people on a mission to save it; also that he has played out dozens of scenarios with various parties in this restaurant before, that he comes back to the moment with his time travel device each time the mission fails to try again. Managing to convince some, he picks up a team of seven and proceeds to guide them along to a house where a child prodigy is developing the A.I. that will destroy the world. Along the way the action is broken up by some of the backstories of these recruits and their own warped experiences with advanced technology.
One of the best tricks of the film is how it presents its world. It is at the start a seemingly very ordinary approximation of our own, only to be revealed gradually through flashbacks as significantly more deranged and absurd, with hyperbolic takes on Gen-Z phone-addicted attitudes and the soulless corporatization of advanced science among other things. Much like in Weapons, the world and stakes are expanded in these flashbacks which build on one another leading into the climax. Though not as bombastic, this world resembles at times the satirical realities of movies like Sorry to Bother You or The Substance, such as in the very casual nature of a clone necromancy service, that can resurrect a deceased loved one but under a kind of corporate mind-spell that occasionally has them dispensing ads and greeting everybody wearing insignia of the U.S. military with an automated “thank you for your service”. It is of course an exaggeration, but one built out of the reality of tech companies and their attitude towards consumers. Same is true of the teenagers, who are stereotypes in their undisciplined confidence, entitlement, and disrespect for older generations. There is a degree of perhaps unwarranted venom there from the writer and director, but it fits broadly with trends around modern youth.
But of course the kids aren’t the problem, the movie directing all of its ire against the vapid falseness of A.I. and virtual reality. It stakes its ground so firmly in the ‘A.I. is evil’ category that it might as well be a Terminator movie. And it certainly takes some cues from T2 in its attempts to cut off the technology at its root. But its sense of stakes are very different -the machines aren’t trying to destroy humanity but numb it, and a lot of the work has already been done by the time the Man arrives. Implicitly it has already been done by the point we are at as well. The film definitely gives the impression beyond its outrageousness of being a cautionary tale -perhaps not of this exact scenario, but of people giving themselves over to dependencies and realities that are false just because they are also comfortable. Locking oneself into a virtual world to avoid the troubles and responsibilities of the real one, replacing a dead child with a hollow clone rather than grieving them -the film eviscerating the American epidemic of school shootings as context here, an uncomfortably if predictably ill-timed feature of the movie. It is the state of things that Verbinski and Robinson fear is only escalating via the capitalistic ambitions of these harmful technologies. What are they going to turn us into?
The film is very sincere about this, but it is bombastic and funny as well. The Man is delightfully unhinged -his capacity to run this mission through countless do-overs giving him a very cavalier attitude about the whole thing, and his team is selected pretty much at random. He warns his band of heroes that not all of them will make it to the end -it is fairly obvious to the viewer which ones won’t based on the particular profiles of the actors cast and who is permitted their own flashback. Juno Temple’s grieving mother Susan has a much better chance than a randomly assigned restaurant chef called Bob (Daniel Barnett). But it doesn’t stop the man from considering them a uniquely suited team in their mix of backgrounds and demographics. And those who we do get to learn more of do curry some investment. The most interesting is a young woman dressed as a princess called Ingrid, played by Haley Lu Richardson -who we eventually learn has an allergy to electronic devices. The Man is particularly hesitant about choosing her, but is convinced by fate seemingly pointing in her direction. And sure enough, she proves pretty vital. Richardson is a stand-out of this movie alongside Rockwell, playing terrifically both the humour and gravity her character wields. Rockwell is just tremendous fun, his character’s approach to everything with a sense of heaviness beset by manic energy and cynicism making for the bedrock of the movie’s tone.
It is a gonzo movie with serious tension and a conscious sense of its eccentricity. It’s humour is sometimes quite dark, even teeming with a meanness towards typical mores of engaging with it. At one point, the Man has a kind of meta epiphany over the trajectory of the adventure, the characters involved and how it relates to the cheap comforts of virtual reality -the movie very much identifying itself and its own proclivities as part of the problem. This gives it a kind of freedom to go hard on subversion, but also feels antithetical to the film’s moments of real emotional intensity that follow. Especially with regards to the climax, which is big and thrilling and consequential -very effective overall. Only for the movie’s resolution to somewhat nullify it and actively mock some of its more traditional narrative tenets -though by extension also to a degree its audience investment. The movie wraps up in a kind of joke, which makes a certain amount of sense for the context if not for the storytelling. It leaves the audience questioning how much in the movie actually mattered.
The point is still clear though, and the bizarre aesthetics that flesh it out make Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die a real ride of a movie, even if the immensely cynical end-note feels a touch sour (there is a perhaps a space left open for a sequel, but this too may just be a part of the satire). Robinson and Verbinski make for a good team, the architecture of Robinson’s story amplified by Verbinski’s style, and their apparent mutual feelings on the subject of the ills of modern technology. It is one of the best anti-A.I. movies we have yet seen and I hope it is far from the last. While it is hyperbolic in its commentary, it is satisfying for how virulent it is, and the richness of its creative action and humour and other elements (you will never forget the cat that shows up in this movie), so specific and human, is its own refutation of the A.I. apocalypse. We can all help save the future.
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