Recxpectations: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is the new film from Gore Verbinsk. The Google synopsis is, “Claiming to be from the future, a man takes hostages at a Los Angeles diner to recruit unlikely heroes to help him save the world.”

EXPECT: AN AI LECTURE IN A FORUMULAIC FILM
”Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” makes a lot of points that I agree with but they are all made at the top of the movie and many of them are made via a monologue from Sam Rockwell’s time traveler. Honestly, there’s not really anything that much more insightful here than Cypher’s betrayal in The Matrix. For me, the film was far more interesting when investigating the world gone wrong by the abundance and over-reliance on tech; once it gets into the actual mission of the movie, it becomes a fairly standard action movie, hitting all of the same beats one expects.

EXPECT: A LOT OF CGI
Part of me thought it was kind of ironic that a movie that is anti-AI would rely so heavily on the previous tech game changer in Hollywood. One of the major complaints about modern Hollywood is that every action/adventure film ends with a massive AI-fest and this film is no different. What made it stand out for me was that the ending features some toys that I swear I’ve seen in previous stop-motion films. All of that being said, it’s damn impressive that this movie cost only 20 million, a paltry sum in Hollywood.

EXPECT: A TRY-HARD MOVIE
In a video before the film at The Alamo, Gore Verbinski said he was inspired by Repo Man and Akira and that he especially loved that there are some enigmatic parts of Akira, especially at the end, that he still doesn’t understand. I'd say that the difference here is that Repo Man and Akira are films that are bonkers while this film just wants to be bonkers. It seemed like they wanted to throw some crazy curveballs in for the sake of seeming “unhinged.” And for me, the more “unhinged” it got, the less interesting it became.

For me, this was another Tik Tok movie. Per Wikipedia, the film started as a TV show idea and then became a film script as the writer added more vignettes and that’s what it felt like. There are a bunch of interesting moments in the movie and they all pretty much can live on their own. Again, the mission that stitches it all together was the weakest part for me.

In the end, I’m dropping this one in between a green and yellow rating. I found it had enough moments that I enjoyed it but the more I thought about it, the less I liked it.