☆☆☆½
A digital wristwatch doesn't tick, but it might as well, because the ticking clock is the classic device that brings constant tension to the zany, overstuffed Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. The frequent reminders that time is running out for the movie's heroes give the film a relentless propulsion that effectively masks other more mundane problems.
Chief among those is that the movie's setup is so perfunctory, and so familiar, that the movie never offers a chance to get perspective, to really understand what's at stake or feel emotionally invested. So, it moves along like a roller coaster ride, engaging the senses and occasionally the brain, but still feels aloof and not quite fully formed.
The setup is this: Inside an L.A. diner one night, a Man from the Future (this is his only credited name) appears out of nowhere and insists he's on a mission to save the world from certain doom. He's dressed in wild fashion, and if he seems a little like Doc Brown, it's not the last time the movie is going to reference Back to the Future.
Or Terminator 2. Or Back to the Future II. Or 12 Monkeys. Or The Matrix. Or any number of time-travel and sci-fi movies that inform everything in the movie, which is crafted in director Gore Verbinski's signature style — that is, it never slows down enough to give you time to think, and is laced with darkness and despair just behind its humor.
Sam Rockwell is the Man from the Future, who recruits a number of the diner's customers to join him on a mission to find the source of an AI program that will take over and ruin the future. The customers include Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beets, Asim Chaudhry and Juno Temple. Richardson and Temple make the strongest impressions, while the other recruits don't get enough personality to make an impression.
Most of them get flashbacks that help us understand why they're tagging along, though the character that matters most — the Man from the Future — is a cypher. Ultimately, we understand his connection to one character, but beyond that the movie doesn't tell us much about the world he comes from, or why he's been selected (or selected himself).
Those aren't small complaints about a movie so filled with story and character, but they're offset by some cogent, cutting commentary about the world we live in now they ways our near-obsessive dependency on technology may have terrible implications for the future. Those ideas are worthwhile, intriguing and sometimes downright pointed.
They're key to and yet not wholly integrated into the story, which ends on a frustratingly vague and too-clever note that doesn't feel fully resolved. And yet, the moment Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die ended, I left my phone in my pocket ... and kept it there. For ten whole minutes. Vive la résistance.
Viewed March 7, 2025 — Alamo Drafthouse
1830
