Today I had a 30 min train ride before I head home, had to run an errant so decided to watch something on the way and pick up "Good Luck Have Fun Dont Die (2026)" , a movie that didnt get my attention because so much was going on with it when it came up, look strange, lots of opinion flying around and it was weird that nobody at work have seen it, probably too sci fi crazy drama for their taste. The opening scene is very strage but at the same time got me locked in right away with Sam Rockwell crashes into a diner in Los Angeles wearing this strange clear trenchcoat, he looks homeless ngl and probably why people didnt even bother with him, he had some device strapped, strats talking about the end of the world and explains to a room full of phone zombies that this is his 117th attempt to stop a catastrophe nobody around him gave a shit. It shows that he has been putting a lot of effort considering this was the 117 attempt, there must be a serious commitment or reason to keep going and shows his desperation in every word, like a guy who has explained the same emergency to the same group of strangers over a hundred times and somehow keeps finding the energy to do it again. Gore Verbinski is back behind the camera after years away and you can tell immediately because that diner scene is shot with real personality, creative angles, the kind of visual choices that remind you someone with a genuine point of view is running the show. The movie drops you straight into the madness without holding your hand or walking you through a slow backstory and I was completely locked in twenty minutes in telling myself this might be a hidden gem for me that I somehow let fly by. That first part of the movie just keeps feeding that feeling without letting upand the whole setup around the phone zombie angle is something we dont see that often in movies, almost like someone dont want to be mention because you look around at the real world and you know exactly what the movie is pointing at without it having to explain itself.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1341338/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
The diner sequence is where this movie probably earns its bars and the chemistry between the actors in that room is something you cannot fake in editing, its almost like the dinner is a character itself. Rockwell is doing this thing where he bounces off every person in the room with this frantic table stomping energy and Michael Peña brings his whole nervous teacher character in as Mark which creates the perfect contrast because Peña knows how to play that specific brand of awkward without going over the top. Zazie Beetz plays Janet and she and Peña share this backstory showing their lives as high school teachers, the whole thing feeling like its own little subplot of the movie about the slow death of the classroom at the hands of technology, which is very clever writing and they just keep doing this through the movie connecting dots this way, it gives the movie something to actually say beyond just the chaos and how fucked up part of humanity is because of tech, tech that makes things so easy for us. Haley Lu Richardson plays the role of Ingrid who is a young woman allergic to technology and she brings something completely different to the group energy. Juno Temple plays Susan and the way the movie builds up each of these characters through their own separate flashback sections makes you care about a group of strangers and this is one of the strongest aspects of the movie how it displays and interconects their personal lifes. From the start it makes you think you are going to love all these weirdos, I want to watch these people save the world together and for the most part of the movie that feeling is justified because everyone is clicking and the dialogue is smooth, nothing over the top, nothing force, you actually believe each one of them is a real character and not an actor you have seen playing a different or better role.
So far I have been just praising this movie but out of nowhere the movie just falls off the edge of a damn cliff. The whole thing runs two hours and change, and you feel every single one of those extra minutes from about the ninety minute mark because the pacing goes completely sideways and what starts as this tight character driven comedy turns into a sequence where the group has to deal with a siege by AI controlled teenagers that clearly somehow look hypnotized or controlled through their phones, I didnt get this clear though but the movies connects the story to a larger threat. They got the house surrounded and eventually start breaking in but the whole scene feels fake, dull and motionless, with actors sometimes looking like they are waiting for their cue instead of actually reacting to each other. I simply dont get why every time somebody tries to put AI into a movie it feels like nobody has cracked the code yet on how to make it matter or like there is some kind of stigma around AI on major role and not necesarly as a character itself, because the human interaction immediately starts feeling less human. Then they throw in this giant catcentaur creature, and I understand that it is supposed to look like the result of a terrible AI prompt. The characters basically throw random ideas into the air and the AI produces this giant nightmare made out of cats, so the ugliness is clearly part of the joke. Still, intentional or not, I thought it looked absolutely terrible. It is the kind of CGI creature that takes you completely out of whatever tension the movie had been building, and instead of feeling like a clever piece of AI satire, it felt like the production could no longer keep up with the visual quality of the first half. It totally threw me off. The actual climax then shifts through a hidden passage into the room where the nine year old boy is developing the AI and this is where the real sauce of the movie is supposed to hit. The AI connects nearly everything we have seen, including the phonecontrolled students, Susan hearing the voice of her dead son and Ingrid losing her boyfriend to virtual reality, while also revealing the connection between Ingrid and the Man from the Future. That should hit hard but by that point the movie has burned through so much sloppy action and random chaos that there is almost no emotional payback left. For a movie to have some kind of impact I need to care about something, I need to love or hate the character, the idea or whatever the hell it is trying to develop, but this one just did not hit it just falls flat between Ai and the weirdness, fells like those confusing maze movies. That is what makes it so frustrating, because at first it looked like it had a lot of potential, you cannot simply write the whole thing off as garbage because there is plenty here that works. Instead, you have to sit there and watch something you liked slowly undo itself and what started as a 9 for me gradually started shutting down. Do not get me wrong, this is not a bad movie but there are parts of it where it drags so hard that you are going to notice yourself reaching for your phone, and considering what the movie is saying about screen addiction, becoming a phone zombie during the movie is probably the worst possible sign.
During those early scenes the whole thing was giving me strong Everything Everywhere All at Once from 2022 with the same kind of weird energy that works, Im not trying to make a direct comparison but just in terms of the tone, that specific mix of dark maniac comedy mixed with something that actually matters underneath all the action and guffy stuff. You can also see Black Mirror all over the place because the movie weaves in these separate flashback chapters showing what happened to each character before the diner scene, I love flashbacks on any story because its probably the perfect way to provide context and the best part is that you can do it at a slow pace without getting the audience confuse and each one on the story work almost like its own short episode with its own little satirical angle on where technology is taking the world little by little at multiple angles. That trick that the movie use to build structure actually works and it gives the movie a scope that feels much bigger than a single diner location would allow, because the limitation of space to develop a story. The problem is that the pacing issue starts to feel exactly like what happened with Mickey 17 on those scenes inside the ship creating more and more clones that keep failing, its almost like a loop like a trap, I remember epxlaining it the other day, talking about time traps like when Neo gets trap on the train station, feels boring, nothing happes its confusing and makes you desperate, here you have this really clever setup that gets buried through all this and you start feeling like there was a lot that was unncessary. The references and the ambitions are all there, Verbinski is clearly swinging for something smart and funny and timely all at once, and the movie lands two out of those three more often than not, which is not bad but also not enough to make it what it could have been.
Look, I liked Good Luck Have Fun Do Not Die, I know I rant a good bit about but its because I enjoy it and could be so much better, it just got me exhausted because I was waiting for something to happen and that gap between liking something and loving it is more disappointing than just hating something clean. Rockwell is an absolute blast to watch from start to finish and he is the main reason I stay hooked even when the movie starts losing its grip, Peña is funny without overdoing it and the whole cast is doing their absolute best with a script that lets them down more than they did because its clear the cast is good enough and more for this movie. This movie came out a while ago so I doubt I spoil anything although if you havent watch it yet just dont go with the expections of any crazy action scenes, you are going to have a good time laught, a good slow time and that is probably a good one time watch for a lazy Saturday where you are not expecting a masterpiece and you just want something weird and funny with a few actually sharp ideas. You will have a good time for the first hour, you will start checking the time somewhere around the ninety minute mark and you will probably finish it anyway because you are already invest some time it and also they do build up properly most of the characters. I am giving Good Luck Have Fun Do Not Die a 8 out of 10, because the diner alone is worth watching, its just a shame that this movie becomes a one trick movie, almost like those movies where there is this one single race or action sequence that eveyone knows about but thats it, sorry if my comments might not be as possitive as most people, I know many are going to love it from start to finish.
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