Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die intrigued me the first time I saw it’s trailer, and when a friend said he wanted to see it because he liked Sam Rockwell (I didn’t even realize it was Sam in the trailer, he’s all done up), I knew I was in for a treat. The premise is thus: a crazy-eyed man from the future (Rockwell as an unnamed character) walks into a diner one night and proclaims he is there to save the world. He is convinced there is the right combination of heroes in this diner, but that he has tried 116 times so far to find the right group, and they haven’t succeeded yet. As crazy as it sounds, he doesn’t seem to be making it up, because he knows everyone in the diner and some personal things about them too, in a Groundhog Day sort of way. It’s all a pretty hilarious game of finding volunteers, When he finally has his ragtag group for this attempt, they are ready to begin.
The man tells the group that they must work their way across town to a 9-year-old who is building an A.I. The group scoffs, saying isn’t that a thing already, but the man says that this particular A.I. will grow to control social media and thus people’s minds. People get so absorbed in their phones that they stop doing their jobs, and half the world’s population will die off within 50 years from failing systems and lack of food. It’s bleak, but the man knows they can stop it from coming. Viewers may think it might be too late, as people are already absorbed in their phones constantly as the movie goes along (one of the man’s volunteers, a teacher played by Michael Pena, has recently had a run-in with smartphone-obsessed students at school who seem to be brainwashed into a zombie-like mob). The team’s leader uses his knowledge from past attempts to guide them across town, but the hardest part awaits when they finally get to the kid’s house, as he has never made it inside. It seems everything in the world is trying to stop them.
The film’s laughs come a mile-a-minute, which does drown out some of the tension in the final act, but I still had a great time. Rockwell is perfect as the crazy (yet somehow sane?) future figure with nothing to lose, and there’s some great twists here and there. It’s also the kind of comedy that has a high re-watchability factor, and that always wins points in my book. ★★★½
Jons Movie Takes 