Culture
Now Playing: ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ is a terrifically loopy time travel odyssey
By: Gordon Briggs
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We start in a diner, where people are having a meal and drinking coffee without a care in the world, when all of a sudden, he appears. A strange, disheveled man in a see-through plastic raincoat who appears to be wearing some kind of machine on his chest. Threatening to carry a bomb, he commandeers the restaurant and tells us that we are all going to help him save the world, but first, we must go back with him through time.
Those are the first few minutes of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, a film that could be one of the standout films of 2026.
Why do I like it so much?
It accomplishes something I always enjoy in my science fiction: taking great big cosmic ideas, strange creatures, and other extraordinary circumstances, then juxtaposing them with the ordinary, everyday places and people you find in life. That contrast between the normal and the absurd always appeals to me.
Good Luck trying to sum up this film’s plot, which is a strange brew of Terminator-style time travel paradoxes, Black Mirror brand intimate dystopia, and the fun of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Here, we follow a mysterious man (a frenzied Sam Rockwell) claiming to be from the future, who takes hostages at a Los Angeles diner to recruit unlikely heroes to help him save the world.
What’s threatening the world? AI, of course.
Most importantly, the film is packed with interesting supporting and lead characters, each of whom is fighting their own personal battles in a world that is growing more artificial and less empathetic.
As Rockwell gathers reluctant recruits for his mission, the movie flashes back to its supporting characters, showing how each ended up at the diner and how each is personally struggling with the perils of artificial intelligence. For instance, one pair of characters is a married couple that both work at a high school, and are slowly watching their students become brainwashed by a mysterious new app.
My favorite performance comes from Juno Temple as a mother so grief-stricken by the loss of her son that she will do anything to get him back, even if that means having her son artificially cloned by AI. That’s what is strange about this dystopia: even human grief itself is offloaded to an algorithm. More specifically, rather than a sudden apocalypse, the film explores a gradual, almost unnoticeable transformation from an analog world to a more synthetic and ultimately stranger reality.
Those ideas could come across as abstract and cerebral “themes” in lesser hands, but there’s genuine anger in Gore Verbinski’s film and a manic energy to the way it hurls us into this future, which is fun to watch. I will describe the movie’s tone as goofy, frantic, and nutty, often taking surreal detours rather than following a linear, straightforward narrative.
Naturally, a movie this good is playing to empty theaters, so please seek it out on streaming and help it gain the cult audience it deserves. ★★★★