Now Playing: ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ is a terrifically crazy time journey odyssey

Now Playing: ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ is a terrifically crazy time journey odyssey

By: Gordon Briggs

Posted on:
Friday, February 27, 2026

< < Back to atom

We begin in a diner, the place persons are having a meal and ingesting espresso and not using a care on this planet, when hastily, he seems. An odd, matted man in a see-through plastic raincoat who seems to be sporting some type of machine on his chest. Threatening to hold a bomb, he commandeers the restaurant and tells us that we’re all going to assist him save the world, however first, we should return with him by time.

Those are the primary couple of minutes of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, a movie that could possibly be one of many standout movies of 2026.

Why do I prefer it a lot?

It accomplishes one thing I at all times take pleasure in in my science fiction: taking nice huge cosmic concepts, unfamiliar beings, and different extraordinary circumstances, then juxtaposing them with the atypical, on a regular basis locations and folks you discover in life. That distinction between the conventional and the absurd at all times appeals to me.

Good Luck making an attempt to sum up this movie’s plot, which is a wierd brew of Terminator-style time journey paradoxes, Black Mirror model intimate dystopia, and the enjoyable of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Here, we observe a mysterious man (a frenzied Sam Rockwell) claiming to be from the longer term, who takes hostages at a Los Angeles diner to recruit unlikely heroes to assist him save the world.

What’s threatening the world? AI, in fact.

Most importantly, the movie is full of attention-grabbing supporting and lead characters, every of whom is combating their very own private battles in a world that’s rising extra synthetic and fewer empathetic.

As Rockwell gathers reluctant recruits for his mission, the film flashes again to its supporting characters, exhibiting how every ended up on the diner and the way every is personally fighting the perils of synthetic intelligence. For occasion, one pair of characters is a married couple that each work at a highschool, and are slowly watching their college students develop into brainwashed by a mysterious new app.

My favourite efficiency comes from Juno Temple as a mom so grief-stricken by the lack of her son that she’s going to do something to get him again, even when which means having her son artificially cloned by AI. That’s what’s unusual about this dystopia: even human grief itself is offloaded to an algorithm. More particularly, fairly than a sudden apocalypse, the movie explores a gradual, virtually unnoticeable transformation from an analog world to a extra artificial and finally stranger actuality.

Those concepts might come throughout as summary and cerebral “themes” in lesser palms, however there’s real anger in Gore Verbinski’s movie and a manic power to the best way it hurls us into this future, which is enjoyable to observe. I’ll describe the film’s tone as goofy, frantic, and nutty, usually taking surreal detours fairly than following a linear, simple narrative.

Naturally, a film this good is taking part in to empty theaters, so please search it out on streaming and assist it acquire the cult viewers it deserves. ★★★★