While watching “Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die” you might experience a lot of déjà vu because this movie borrows a lot from previous movies. Time travel movies like “Terminator”, “Back to the Future”, and especially “Twelve Monkeys” and other movies including “Groundhog Day”, and “Ghostbusters”.
It’s sort of like the déjà vu the unnamed man from the future (Sam Rockwell) feels. In the opening scene, he walks into a somewhat popular Norms diner (the diner actually has its own style of poster for the movie) – like he says he “…has done 117 times before” – searching for the perfect combination of people to save the future. This time, the future is taken over by A.I. He says that in the future, “…half the world population is dead, and the other half is controlled by A.I.” (for most people in the movie the A.I. is from their phones).
After a very funny speech explaining the situation and proving that he knows some of the people in the diner “…more than you know yourself” he gets one woman – Susan (Juno Temple) – to volunteer. Then he picks out 4 other people – Mark and Janet (Michael Pena and Zazi Beetz), Scott (Asim Chaudhry), Bob (Daniel Barnett), and Maria (Georgia Goodman). To round out the group he initially rejects and then accepts Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson).
Although he says he’s done this 117 times before, the only thing he is sure of is that he is not expendable (everyone else is). Anytime things go awry he prepares to press the button that sends him back to the future so he can try the 118th time. He doesn’t even have a perfect plan to get out of the restaurant as police surround the building. Fortunately, he selected some very good people.
While the group are trying to get to their goal, there are some flashbacks showing how A.I. is slowly taking over. Mark and Janet are both schoolteachers who end up being pursued by a growing mob of zombie like students that seem to be controlled by their phones. Susan loses her son in a school shooting. She gets a “clone” of her son which she isn’t really comfortable with because he’s not that similar to her son. Then she gets a “voice” of her son that feels more like her real son.
Ingrid is allergic to WIFI/the internet (although no one can explain why). Any time she gets near it she gets headaches, and her nose starts bleeding. She has a job hosting young children’s birthday parties (since they’re just starting to use phones) and she falls in love with Tim (Tom Taylor) who lives off the grid. He’d rather use a Thomas Guide maps to get around instead of using the internet. Unfortunately, a VR headset appears at their door one day and he almost instantly gets addicted to it. As the group keeps moving to their goal, the people (and things) that get in their way get weirder and weirder and the group gets smaller. The man said that “some of you might not survive the night”
There are several very funny scenes in this movie. Sam Rockwell’s opening speech in the diner is great. The way that Susan picks out the traits of her “clone” son is also very funny. Susan talks to a couple that are so jaded by their child getting killed over and over, they just go crazy and create a silly version of their new clone. The school is so used to shootings that it has a standard procedure for it that the faculty is bored of doing so many times. Plus, there is a scene in this movie that’s déjà vu for a scene in the original “Ghostbusters” but it goes way beyond the scene in that movie (unfortunately it seems like they didn’t have a lot of money for the CGI in the scene).
On the other hand, the plotline frequently stumbles. There are quite a few plot holes. The main one is who is behind the surge of A.I. Just like how “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” explains how the robots were first created, there must be something or someone behind the surge of A.I. There’s a reference to the government paying for part of Susan’s “clone” son and the clones will go out of their way to say “Thank You for Your Service” for anyone in the military (even if the person is just wearing a hat with an Army logo). There are also a couple scenes that seem like A.I. is being funded by advertising.
The runtime of 2 hours 14 minutes is a little long. They could have cut out some of the scenes – especially the room where some of the final scenes happen. At the same time, there’s also some funny scenes that I would have liked to see more of. I would be interested in a sequel movie if it ever happens.
Overall, the movie has some stumbles and some plot holes and there’s a lot of “they took that from (other movie)”, but there’s also some very funny scenes that make the movie very entertaining.
(By the way – if you go see the movie and watch several previews for horror movies or thrillers before it like I did, don’t worry. It seems like the movie theater doesn’t understand this movie)
Overall – 7.5 out of 10.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 