Sam Rockwell looks to be having the time of his life in this brilliant, biting satire from Gore Verbinski. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a screwball sci-fi romp that gradually reveals itself as a hugely effective war-cry against AI and the hollowness of the modern world.
Rockwell’s unnamed time-traveler crashes into present-day Los Angeles with a warning he’s delivered over a 100 times before. The “bomb” on his chest is a reset button. He’s stuck in a loop, replaying the same recruitment pitch in a diner, searching for the right combination of misfits to help him save humanity. Rockwell plays him like a deranged street preacher who finds himself leading the fight against human extinction
The film’s tonal whiplash recalls Everything Everywhere All at Once, another movie that weaponised absurdity to explore existential dread. Verbinski’s film leaps between slapstick and more profound themes, but where Everything Everywhere finds hope in radical empathy, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is more skeptical about saving humanity from its own selfishness.
There’s also a streak of the grotesque whimsy of Jennet and Caro’s Delicatessen in the production design throughout. The diner feels like a sealed ecosystem of eccentrics, each character heightened but heartbreakingly human. Verbinski shoots them with a cartoonist’s eye, then undercuts the caricature with genuine social commentary.
Most strikingly, the film shares DNA with 12 Monkeys. Like Terry Gilliam’s time-loop nightmare, this story traps its protagonist in cycles that blur fate and futility. Rockwell’s traveler, resigned yet compulsive, feels like a cousin to Bruce Willis’ haunted messenger. Both films ask whether foreknowledge is a gift or a curse, and whether trying to change the future is itself part of the design.
Elsewhere, Haley Lu Richardson gives Ingrid a fragile, ferocious sincerity; her “allergy” to AI hallucinations could have been a joke, but Richardson turns every nosebleed into an act of resistance. Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz, as Mark and Janet, bring a lived-in warmth that makes their characters’ essential to the mission. Juno Temple lends Susan a quiet ache that deepens the film’s emotional stakes as a mother grieving the death of her only child in a school shooting.
Varbinski’s message is clear – even if it’s sometimes a little on too on the nose – AI offers the comfort of endless resets, curated realities and instant gratification. But while resistance might be futile, it remains our most human trait. To choose the struggle and to love and be loved is what makes us human and nothing can ever change that.
