A man walks into a diner wearing a clear plastic raincoat, mismatched shoes and what looks like a suicide vest. He claims to be from the future, sent back in time to save humanity from the imminent and inevitable AI uprising. This disheveled evangelist is played by Sam Rockwell in the wild-eyed “Is he deranged or is he the only sane one here?” mode of many a Terry Gilliam character (think Robin Williams in “The Fisher King” or Bruce Willis in “12 Monkeys”). He’s a bum-prophet — the kind who goes out half-Croc’d, smelling of garbage — searching for heroes to avert the apocalypse.
What are the odds that this crackpot might find the perfect mix of soldiers and suckers for his quest among the late-night crowd at one of L.A.’s timeless-looking Norms joints? “All of this goes horribly wrong!” he bellows — meaning Life As We Know It — as he gestures to a restaurant full of weirdos, most of whom are mesmerized by their smartphones at the expense of human connection. Their skepticism is perfectly understandable (we feel it, too, since you’d have to be a bit crazy yourself to follow such a leader), but the movie doesn’t leave room for much doubt: Rockwell’s Man From the Future really is from the future.
The rowdy return of “Pirates of the Caribbean” director Gore Verbinski (coming off nearly a decade in director’s jail), “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is an unapologetically irreverent, wildly inventive, end-is-nigh take on the time-loop movie — call it “Terminator 2: Groundhog Day” — except that here, Rockwell’s dizzy protagonist knows what it takes to stop the cycle. He just hasn’t come anywhere close to doing so in the 117 attempts he’s made so far. This guy has tried so many combinations of the available players, but something feels different about this particular run-through.
For starters, a woman he’s never enlisted before volunteers for the first time: That would be Susan (Juno Temple), whose backstory and motives will be revealed in one of the movie’s several timeline-rewinding vignettes. What’s more, a cosmic indicator suggests he should also include Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a nihilistic millennial in tear-smeared makeup and a tattered blue princess dress, even though her death-wish energy freaks him out. The Man From the Future is clear: Sacrifices must be made, not everyone will survive, but nothing short of the fate of humanity is at stake.
Kooky yet charismatic, this sky-is-falling team captain taps five more diners to round out his group, including schoolteachers Mark and Janet (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz), a schlubby Boy Scout leader (Daniel Barnett) and two wild-card picks (Asim Chaudhry and Dominique Maher), at least one of whom doesn’t live long enough to merit the backstory treatment. Half the comedy comes from Rockwell’s exaggerated impatience with the people he’s trying to save. That handheld clicker tied to his vest? It’s not a detonator but a reset button that will flash him back to the moment he walked into Norms (or so he claims).
If “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” sounds like a video game, that’s no accident. The title reflects an exchange between characters in “Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate,” while “Mass Effect 2” also begins with choosing a team of players to save the world. From “The cake is a lie” to “No future,” Matthew Robinson’s hyper-referential script is full of inside jokes for gamers. Or, to take it one step further, the movie invites us to question whether its reality is in fact a simulation, playing off Elon Musk’s theory that the two will eventually be indistinguishable. You’ve gotta admit it’s odd how the characters’ comments impact each iteration, the way ChatGPT prompts might.
Never predictable (or safe) in his choices, “MouseHunt” architect Verbinski has been sorely missed. It takes a virtuoso of his caliber to execute on the movie’s intricate “Everything Everywhere All at Once”-level imagination, even if the gonzo idea man here is actually Robinson. The writer’s uncanny edgelord satire includes the meme-ready, glitter-squirting equivalent of the “Ghostbusters” Marshmallow Man; a service that clones the victims of all-too-frequent school shootings; and a swarm of device-addicted teens (Midwich cuckoos, really) who mindlessly recite, “Thank you for your service,” to anyone in uniform.
Such impertinence is bound to offend some audiences, even as others (Ernest Cline readers or Scott Pilgrim fans, for example) embrace it as the rare film that gets the post-ironic attitude they find on social media and in online forums. The title’s a pretty good clue to its tone. Channeling the flip, “Can you believe this guy?” mojo he brought to “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” Rockwell makes a great avatar for the cavalier stance that nothing matters when you get endless lives — a dangerous mentality among the gamer generation.
Whereas Rockwell’s co-stars are interchangeable by design, it’s hard to imagine any of this working with another actor in his role. Still, it’s almost perverse to process a movie lecturing us about the danger of screens, even if the extravagant “Akira”-like climax makes the rogue AI seem very dangerous indeed. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” repeats once again the trope of an all-powerful bald child whom people are trying either to protect or destroy (the mission here is simply to install safety protocols in the self-generating AI). Fittingly, after the back-to-back flops of “The Lone Ranger” and “A Cure for Wellness,” this daring project represents a redemption-seeking do-over for Verbinski too. Here’s hoping it works.
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