Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
Availability: Still showing in some theaters nationally. For rent or purchase on major online platforms, including Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. See JustWatch here for full options.
“Groundhog Day” meets “Pulp Fiction” meets “The Truman Show”
While Anthropic and OpenAI wage war for the soul of AI, and possibly humanity, with advances in artificial intelligence mere mortals can only hope to grasp, film—and film comedy especially—may be the best vehicle for wrestling with the existential dilemma of a civilization in thrall to technology. In Gore Verbinski’s entertaining and clever dystopian sci-fi adventure, The Man from the Future, at once hopeful and cynical, optimistic and pragmatic, is here to try to save us, for the 118th time.
The Man from the Future (Sam Rockwell) is at his intimidating best
confronting the frat bros at Norms diner.
Sam Rockwell is mesmerizingly magnificent as he cajoles, intimidates, and terrifies an audience of the unwilling in all-night LA diner Norms (an authentic diner, no apostrophe please). Looking more homeless than futuristic, The Man from the Future is decked out in what appears to be a suicide bomber vest, complete with batteries, tubes and cords—his finger on a plunger—and shower curtain raincoat. He ranges among the diners, ala “Pulp Fiction,” commanding their attention, making it clear, since he’s done this more than 100 times, ala “Groundhog Day,” that he knows who they are and what they are capable and incapable of.
Sam Rockwell is mesmerizingly magnificent as he cajoles, intimidates, and terrifies an audience of the unwilling in all-night LA diner Norms.
The Man is enlisting his Dirty Dozen, or since there are 7 recruits, a Magnificent Seven, to join him in his quest to put guardrails on AI and thereby save the planet, which needs saving—he shouts at them—because he’s from the future and he knows. Give the new casting Oscar to whomever put together the motley crew, who all bring their A acting game.
The first, and only true volunteer, is Susan, a traumatized mother who has lost her son Darren (Riccardo Drayton) in a school shooting. Juno Temple, hardly recognizable from her excellent turn as Keeley in TV’s “Ted Lasso,” embodies a mother’s grief. That grief is soon tempered by advice from the tall, skinny Fashionable Moms (more like the Housewives of…) who direct Susan to a clone store, school shootings having become so commonplace that the dead are replaced—repeatedly—by clones. The link between AI and school shootings is tenuous, but AI definitely is employed to manufacture on the spot the (imperfect) clones. In one of the funniest sequences in the film, salesman Blaise (Dino Fetscher) guides Susan through identifying traits of her son, producing a look-alike, cheaper version that spouts ads, in Darren’s case, for flavored tea.
The Magnificent Seven recruits will come to include, from left, Scout troop leader Scott
(Asim Chaudhry), teacher Janet (Zazie Beetz), Ingrid/Princess (Haley Lu Richardson),
teacher Mark (Michael Peña), and grieving mother Susan (Juno Temple),
"armed" here for battle with teen zombie hordes.
Two of the intrepid 7 are schoolteachers Mark and Janet. Mark has the misfortune of being a substitute teacher in a reality where all students are glued to their cellphones (not so sci-fi) and become zombies when their devices are taken away. Introvert Mark (a wry Michael Peña) is introduced to arrogant, ignorant teens in a wonderful send-up of that overbearing, narcissistic, demanding generation. “I need a Pepsi,” announces one of his students, as if that’s entirely appropriate mid-class. Janet (Zazie Beetz), his romantic partner, is the sassy, in-the-know teacher telling Mark he needs to man-up, or else he’ll soon be among the many teachers and administrators who, even though it’s a high school, are on indefinite sabbaticals.
“I need a Pepsi,” announces one of his students, as if that’s entirely appropriate mid-class.
The last to sign up for The Man’s quest is Ingrid, or Princess, Carrie-like in her soiled prom gown and bleeding from the nose. Haley Lu Richardson (the remarkably naïve Portia in “The White Lotus” TV series 2nd season) roleplays a princess at little girls’ birthday parties, until, that is, every little girl has a cell phone. Ingrid/Princess is allergic to technology (the bleeding nose), and like Susan and Mark, she too has been traumatized—by losing her source of earnings and her life partner Tim. In another riff on the dangers of tech, Tim (Tom Taylor) succumbs to virtual reality—so thoroughly that he leaves real life for a simulated one.
The movement through Los Angeles borrows from the dérive of the postwar Situationists.
That’s the set-up. What follows is the classic quest, with demons to be slain, including the homeless man with a knife, 2 guys wearing pig-masks driving a rampaging car, and hordes of teen zombies. The movement through Los Angeles borrows from the dérive of the postwar Situationists (and Teddy Roosevelt’s romps through Washington, D.C., and perhaps last year’s “Weapons”), as The Man and his troupe barge under, over, up and through buildings of all kinds. The film also raises Situationist concepts in its treatment of The Society of the Spectacle (the title of theorist Guy DeBord’s influential 1967 treatise) and recuperation (the “system” absorbs rebellion).
Princess/Ingrid (Richardson) is all-in, even though she's allergic to technology, fighting the heretofore unrestrained AI, her blood and soiled prom gown reminiscent of Carrie.
Writer Matthew Robinson (best known for 2009’s “The Invention of Lying,” co-written and co-directed by Ricky Gervais) keeps the action going to this point. When the script finally gets to the goal—the house where AI is being “perfected” —it gets too messy and crazy to sustain the narrative. Not as messy as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022), but less coherent with its feints and dodges through and around multiple layers of simulacra.
The AI master turns out to be a 9-year-old bald boy (a bald Mark Zuckerberg?
or a cross between Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos?) on a pyramid of cords,
seemingly unstoppable at creating his own version of the future.
Robinson and Verbinski (the director has brought to the screen such diverse projects as “Rango,” for which he won the 2012 Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, and 3 “Pirates of the Caribbean”) have produced a well-written, kinetic, and sobering comedy. Its point is driven home daily, whether in the degradation of education, the corruption of communication, or the recent warning of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that the company’s new product, Claude Mythos, needs to be reined in because its advanced capabilities could enable devastating, widespread hacks and terror attacks.
New time you’re in Norms, look for The Man of the Future. And volunteer for the expedition.
She says: Much more entertaining than its lousy title suggests or than we expected, and also frighteningly on target.
He says: I was sure when I saw the trailer (more than once) that I wouldn’t enjoy this film. I was wrong.
Date: 2026
Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Juno Temple, Haley Jo Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Tom Taylor, Riccardo Drayton, Dino Fetscher, Asim Chaudhry
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 134 minutes
Other Awards: None to date