Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die overview – AI is the dangerous man in energetic but overstuffed caper | Sam Rockwell

Despite directing a phenomenally profitable franchise starter (Pirates of the Caribbean), two of its sequels (Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End), a smash-hit horror remake (The Ring), an Oscar-winning animation (Rango), and movies starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts (The Mexican) and Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine (The Weather Man), Gore Verbinski by no means fairly broke by as a reputation the typical cinemagoer would immediately recognise. There are some through-lines in his work – a darkish sense of humour, an ease with pushing megastars previous their limits – however he was largely there in service of one thing or another person, whether or not or not it’s IP or an A-lister.

After each consumed him in 2013’s loathed flop The Lone Ranger, Verbinski went away and returned three years later with an extravagant “one for me”, the bold throwback horror A Cure for Wellness. I finally admired what he was attempting to do (a gothic, exquisitely crafted unique chiller with an actual funds) greater than what he really achieved, and with one other box-office disappointment underneath his belt, he disappeared once more. An extended wait of virtually a decade adopted, and now he’s again with a fair greater swing, the sci-fi comedy journey Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

The swing was, actually, so huge that it was made independently after which picked up by Briarcliff, an organization largely recognized for purchasing movies others received’t contact, whether or not that be right down to content material (Trump drama The Apprentice), off-screen controversy (Jonathan Majors’ automobile Magazine Dreams) or high quality (Benedict Cumberbatch dud The Thing With Feathers). It’s not that the movie doesn’t have industrial parts – huge motion set items, a recognisable solid, what seems to be an honest funds – it’s simply packaged in a means that makes it extra of an outlier in 2026, in ways in which each work and don’t. Like A Cure for Wellness, it’s a factor of particular character and spectacular craft, however like that movie it’s additionally cursed with an ungainly size (134 minutes to A Cure’s 147) and a irritating lack of restraint.

It’s a particular step up, although, a extra full concept of the form of movie Verbinski could be making if the trade actually let him (the previous few years have seen him attempt, and to date fail, to get quite a few initiatives off the bottom, together with animated journey Cattywampus and a George RR Martin adaptation). It begins with an unoriginal but instantly involving attention-grabber: a person walks right into a diner claiming he’s from the longer term. The man is performed by a manic Sam Rockwell, and he warns of a future the place smartphone dependency has led to societal collapse and synthetic intelligence has gained full management. He wants volunteers to assist him observe down the supply and steer it in a greater path, a quest he’s tried a number of occasions earlier than with out success, however, with the way forward for humanity on his shoulders, one he should preserve attempting and attempting once more.

It’s the outdated Terminator 2 setup up to date with parts of Black Mirror, The Mitchells vs the Machines, The Matrix, Wall-E and, shudder, Y2K with a touch of Everything Everywhere’s gonzo maximalism (for a movie positioning itself as a wild new imaginative and prescient, it’s all somewhat acquainted). It’s quite a bit and it’s supposed to be – flashbacks, flashforwards, simply normal flashes – but it surely’s stunning how a lot really sticks, given how nauseating the very worst model of this cocktail may have been. That’s partly due to the movie’s well timed hatred of all issues AI (Verbinski’s press tour has additionally been pleasingly sour in direction of it) and the way it makes use of the corrosive penalties of dwelling our lives out on a cellphone display because the lead-in to an apocalyptic nightmare, all awfully relatable at this significantly terrible second. Once Rockwell’s chief picks his ensemble (together with Juno Temple, Zazie Beetz, Haley Lu Richardson and Michael Peña), screenwriter Matthew Robinson provides the outstanding characters every a vignette to indicate how tech had been negatively affecting them, from a trainer combating a classroom of TikTok addicts to a mom transferring her lifeless son’s consciousness right into a clone. They all take us to way more fascinating locations than the extra run-of-the-mill quest we preserve returning to.

The leaping round can go away us just a little too dizzy, particularly when added to the madcap, anything-goes guidelines of the enemy, which brings forth pig-masked goons, toys dropped at life and, most unsuccessfully, a human-eating big cat creature. The up-to-11 extra, when megaphoned to us at such a hefty run time (one seems like a restricted sequence may have labored higher), can take away from the smaller, smarter observations and extra human moments that work higher, the disappointment of what tech has already taken away and the concern over what else is to come back. Rockwell, whose performances generally want a reining-in that isn’t at all times on present elsewhere right here, manages to maintain issues nearly on the fitting aspect, extra energised than annoying, whereas, as is usually the case, Richardson is a standout, including texture to her frowny tech-allergic purist who could be the important thing to the whole lot.

Even if a lot of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is in want of a rethink, it’s arduous to not benefit from the scrappy, animated brainstorm going down in entrance of us. The mess of all of it is a minimum of a really human one.

• Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is out within the US and Australia on 13 February and within the UK on 20 February