Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
- 21 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Ohhhhh, the trailer looked so good. The absolute chaos of it all. A bit long of a title, though you won't hear about it from me if it works. But oof. I’ve often said the only reason a movie has ever let me down by a movie is if it had every ingredient to work and the creators managed to switch the baking soda with baking powder (why am I on a baking metaphor? Who knows.). And I have to say: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. And a little mad.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026) follows The Man from the Future (Sam Rockwell) as he recruits a ragtag team of heroes from a diner to save the world from the evils of AI. He's never grabbed quite the right bunch of late-night diner patrons, so this isn't his first trip, but who knows. This time, this group, might just succeed.
Okay, let's go through what GLHFDD (which is what I'm going to call it from now on so I can't be accused of cheating the word count) gets right: first, the acting. Sam Rockwell as an on-edge, unhinged, possibly insane Man from the Future is chef's kiss. He nails the humor, but also the serious, silent glances that you can't quite pin down.
And Haley Lu Richardson, opposite him, is just as good. Her character comes out of nowhere, in an already dystopian world, with nothing to lose. She's angsty but with depth. It's a tough play, since it can come off as just a character with a bad attitude you'd rather not spend 134 minutes with, let alone a journey to save the future (which, given the present, doesn't look good). But Richardson navigates it with ease, a simmering something just beneath the surface that you can't wait to figure out.
As far as the other actors, Michael Peña, always a favorite, Zazie Beetz, hilarious alongside him, Juno Temple and her wide eyes, welling with tears and something you're just not quite sure of make her perfect for a role like this. Plus, Asim Chaudry, Georgia Goodman, and Daniel Barnett are ever so funny, rounding out the group.
Next, I think the general story works. I don't even mind that it's heavy-handed. You know if you're going to a movie about AI, it’s going to be evil; there's little deviation from that plot. And, as someone who is not entirely convinced Hallmark wasn’t the first chatbot inventor to churn out their movies before ChatGPT came along, I'm not opposed to the arc.
But the issues, GLHFDD's problems, start to arise almost immediately. We open with a wonderfully captured and edited diner scene that could've been a boring establishing shot, but under Gore Verbinski's direction and cinematographer James Whitaker, it's quirky and close-up. Editor Craig Wood doesn't reveal more than needed to set the scene. Then the Man from the Future breaks into the scene, and all bets are off. Because not only does the script call for him to exposition-dump once, it asks him to do it twice.
Which is confusing. And Sam Rockwell powers through it, but we're in this diner for an impressive chunk of the 134 minutes of runtime, and part of that is him telling a joke that lands, giving it a couple of minutes, and then telling it again. And it's irksome because the jokes ARE funny. But you have to trust that your audience knows it's funny and not fourth wall break in the worst way, where you go, "see what I did there?"
...you have to trust that your audience knows it's funny and not fourth wall break in the worst way, where you go, "see what I did there?"
But then there's also things that the script DOESN'T explain. Like the title, which is set up to sound like it means something even though we never get around to it (probably because we spent too much time in that stupid diner). Or, like, why is the AI the way it is? Or how The Man from the Future knows how to fix it? Or why are we being chased? Or why we're acting like two characters have some huge reveal backstory if we're only going to tackle one and just partially touch on the other?
Ugh. It's such a fantastically fun premise and, for the most part, truly enjoyable and weird. So, I don't know, good luck. Sam Rockwell's worth the ticket price. Have fun eating popcorn amongst the blood and chaos. And just, please, whatever you do, don't die (of sheer irritation).
