“All of this goes horribly wrong.” Man From The Future (Sam Rockwell)
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is the most wacked out and spot on satire you’ll understand completely and sorrowfully. It’s so zany as to be incomprehensible at times while the sci-fi comedy makes total sense as it grapples with the force of an alien invasion: AI and its minions’ smart phones.
GLHFDD reminds us of the virus variety of AI menaces such as in the recent Mission Impossible pics or the almost human like Her. The most sophisticated take would be Hal in 2001 or Matrix. In any case, this new version is more about hapless humans anticipating the devastation of AI than its daily menace in classroom student smart phones.
As a former educator, I saw the birth and growth of those transforming and damning little devices that hypnotically hod all the knowledge of the world and the minds of the young. GLHFDD is smart enough to wring comedy about a man from the future, who corrals the disgruntled denizens of Norms Diner in LA to help him stop the emergence of a menace that will destroy civilization.
The AI is being built by a nine-year-old kid pounding away on his computer while this troop must find him to stop the monster’s creation. Along the way in the film, lampooning our failures is pervasive. For instance, multiple scenes depict the aftermath of school shootings down to cloning the victims so they can experience the rampages again, as many as four clones of one victim!
This satire seems almost too dark, but with wild director Gore Verbinski it is light and to the point about how such tragedy could happen. GLHFDD makes it so; the message is entertainingly clear: Be mindful of AI and never underestimate its hypnotic and lethal effect on the young.