‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Takes Down AI With the Help of Humor, Heart and Sam Rockwell

The answer to whether there is an entertaining way to present the potential dangers of artificial intelligence may have arrived with “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”, a wacky new comedy with an everything-but-the-kitchen sink style. When it remembers to amuse and coax, and not just preach and pummel, the film envisions a plausible scenario where technology is not just inescapable but detrimental, akin to an elaborate episode of dystopian Netflix show “Black Mirror.” Directed by unconventional director Gore Verbinski from a script by Matthew Robinson, the movie revolves around a “man from the future” (Sam Rockwell) enlisting several ordinary citizens to help him tame AI before it takes over and ruins the world. A few of these individuals prove fortuitous to the success of the mission, and the film sprinkles flashbacks of their lives throughout to fill us in on how their struggles inform the larger plot. These flashbacks reflect the film’s strongest material —its strange satirical heart— and contrast with the action adventure shenanigans of present-day scenes.It all starts in the iconic NORMS diner on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. Mr. Rockwell’s character walks in and begins to rant and rave about how he’s from the future, where everything has gone wrong, and how people’s penchant for distraction and reliance on technology are the culprits. Sounding like a crazed street preacher and looking like a homeless man with a taste for wiring and tubes, our hero whizzes past the patrons, grabbing their phones and jumping on tables, keeping the vibe light despite the hectoring tone. He knows things about them since he’s been there before, 117 times to be exact, but each time his attempt to guardrail AI has failed. He mentions he’s wearing a bomb, later on revealed to be a time-traveling device. Eventually, he chooses a few reluctant customers while a few others volunteer to help him in his quest, which involves visiting the home of a nine-year-old boy who is inventing a God-like, malevolent processing system. The fact that he zaps from the future to the diner instead of a location nearer the house has something to do with how the diner affords him a wide spectrum of human capital and skill combinations, which could be read as one more rebuke of artificial intelligence.Other issues somewhat related to AI pop up as well, such as phones in classrooms and virtual reality delusion. Yet the most disturbing topic raised is the prevalence of school shootings, which is introduced when we see Juno Temple’s Susan before her involvement in the mission. Susan loses her teenage son in a shooting, which is not shown. What is depicted is how the distressingly recurrent phenomenon has created blasé parents and an entire industry, complete with an Apple store-resembling business that allows Susan to clone her son, though the replica is a poor one personality-wise.While the cloning service sequence embraces cutting satire, particularly when Susan is pressured to choose only a few traits for her new son, the film’s sharpest scene occurs when she meets a couple who have replaced their dead daughter with a cloned version several times due to the frequency of the girl getting killed. Filled with mordant dialogue eliciting laughter, squeamishness, and even ache, the scene is so smart that one wishes the film had more like it.Mr. Verbinski’s primary directorial mode is zany genre-hopping and intricate set piece orchestration, similar to his work in the first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. Accordingly, we get a madcap sequence in what appears to be an abandoned mall, and countless nods to different cinematic forms, including film noir, horror, early Spielberg, westerns, and war movies. Occasionally, the video game-ish plot undermines the humans-vs-computers theme. Yet this gaming structure and the multiple meta references could also be interpreted as the filmmakers’ way of engaging in the content-vs-art debate and even critiquing the so-called military-entertainment complex. Setting aside the intent, conscious or otherwise, there’s no denying the fun that’s generated from the ragtag group as they avoid police, bad guys, and zombified teens to get to their destination.A couple of the actors are able to inject some shading and emotion into their one-dimensional characters, such as Haley Lu Richardson (season two of “The White Lotus”) as cellphone-allergic Ingrid. Naturally, it falls on Mr. Rockwell to hold the whole thing together, and he does so with his trademark energy and irreverent flair.At one point, Rockwell’s character bemoans his troop’s lack of seriousness, and the film, too, could be said to suffer from a similar flippancy and even multiple-personality disorder, veering from cartoonish antics to apocalyptic drama, from social satire to sci-fi silliness, from clever visuals to corny punchlines, and from a gloriously ridiculous hybrid monster to talk of how society is ill. This multiplicity shows up in the climax as well, in which the emotional stakes are raised at the same time that Mr. Verbinski gives us whirling action and misfit toys straight out of “Toy Story.” Ultimately, the movie’s indictment of technology works best when it sticks to humor and its characters’ stories and less so when it outputs stilted plot mechanics, filmic allusions, and social media-simulating reels. After all, it’s not AI slop.

‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ Takes Down AI With the Help of Humor, Heart and Sam Rockwell

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