Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die movie review: Sam Rockwell can’t save this sci-fi mess | Movie-review News
4 min readFeb 20, 2026 06:12 PM IST
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die movie review: A doomsday scenario about Artificial Intelligence, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is like the product of an AI tool which is still finding its feet. So there is a lot of information, and tonnes of electric wires and cables hanging about to make us take note. But should we ascribe the word “intelligent” to this mess? That is a stretch.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW VIDEO
Rockwell plays ‘The Man From the Future’ who arrives at a diner at exactly 10.10 pm, with a whole lot of explosives and wires strapped to his body and a switch to trigger them in his hand. He tells the diners who look more disinterested than scared at this strange sight that he needs “volunteers” who will come with him for a mission, which is to stop the future from turning out the way it has. This is his 117th attempt at the same diner, and every time, he picks a different mix.
This night, the group whom ‘The Man From the Future’ picks or who join him willingly include a couple, Mark (Peña) and Janet (Beetz), grieving mother Susan (Temple), an Uber driver (Chaudhry), and a young woman in a princess costume called Ingrid (Richardson).
Random as they are, this group comes closest to the end goal that ‘The Man From the Future’ has, and which he reveals bit by bit.
Verbinski, who believes in spectacles like his The Pirates of the Caribbean series, interprets AI so loosely as to encompass everything from mobile phones to the power of cloning, to the destruction of human beings and their relationship to each other in general.
The main characters get a back story that ties in with their present. March and Janet, for example, have earlier that day been chased away from the school where they teach, by a group of zombied teenagers angry at him for objecting to their use of telephones in class. Verbinski suggests the anxieties teachers face in the classrooms of the new world, where anything can prove a landmine.
Susan’s story is the most Black Mirror-ish. A mother loses her teenage child in a school shooting, and is offered a replacement in the form of a government-funded clone. Susan gets a clone of her son, but the idea turns sour for her almost at once, and she is even more horrified when a couple talk about their “fourth time” at this experiment – having lost one son in a school shooting, and the other two as clones.
Story continues below this ad
So this time they have decided to have “fun” with the child they have applied for, and have got themselves one who is very, very tall, and identifies himself as “Muslim”.
Ingrid, played by Richardson, has a less compelling story, with her “allergy” towards all electronics and WiFi seeming more like a plot device. Her world changes overnight after her partner, who is as electronic averse, decides to join the groupies who swear by virtual reality.
Also Read – GOAT movie review: Stephen Curry’s animated sports saga is more noise than game
Last but not the least is ‘The Man From the Future’, who recalls his mother, who tried to keep him away from nearly all technology.
Story continues below this ad
In fact, the back stories of each are more compelling than the film’s ultimate premise of saving the world from itself.
So good luck to all you viewers, and have fun. The “don’t die” part is not worth dying for.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die movie director: Gore Verbinski
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die movie cast: Sam Rockwell, Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die movie rating: 2.5 stars
