‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die’ Review: Gore Verbinski’s Fun Anti-Ai Romp Goes Against the System
For nearly a decade, he lay dormant, and now Gore Verbinski has been unleashed from director jail and gone full unhinged! The filmmaker who blessed the world with Rango, Mouse Hunt, and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy should’ve been exonerated long ago. In the good yet overlong dark comedy sci-fi romp, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Verbinski returns to form like an old school boxer coming out of retirement, proving he still has the juice. It's a Terminator-meets-Magnolia feature in the way of Everything Everywhere All at Once, with a big "FUCK AI" motif worn on its sleeve. While that's a mouthful, it's a conceit only the idiosyncratic, stylish filmmaker can realize.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment
MPA Rating: R (for pervasive language, violence, some grisly images and brief sexual content.)
Runtime: 2 Hours and 14 Minutes
Language: English
Production Companies: 3 Arts Entertainment, Blind Wink Productions, Constantin Film, Robert Kulzer Productions, WAM Films
Distributor: Briarcliff Entertainment
Director: Gore Verbinski
Writers: Matthew Robinson
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Juno Temple, Georgia Goodman
U.S Release Date: February 13, 2026
A hobo-looking time traveler from the future (Sam Rockwell), donning a DIY retro-futuristic suit, holds a diner hostage. His demands: assemble a group of citizens to help him on his quest to stop an evil AI force from unleashing a program to destroy the future. But the arrival the viewers see him in is far from his first rodeo. He's been in countless time loops and has witnessed many failed outcomes to the point of numbness and quasi-lunacy. Nevertheless, he enlists a crew: Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a depressed party entertainer with an allergy to WiFi; Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother with a robo-son; Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), a school-teaching couple on the rocks; Scott (Asim Chaudhry), pessimistic yet abrasive guy; and Marie (Georgia Goodman), a woman who just wanted pie. The Doomsday Squad has to avoid many dangerous things along the way, including police, masked mercenaries, a horde of zombified teens, and a gigantic catzilla. Vignettes, a la Black Mirror, full of sci-fi-themed shenanigans, are interspersed throughout the journey, chronicling the madness the supporting characters endured before arriving at the diner.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die Proudly Wear its Anti-AI Motif on its Sleeve
Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Georgia Goodman, and Juno Temple in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (Briarcliff Entertainment)
For context, I screened Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die in the same week as the b.s. blunder Mercy. So, I really mean it when I say that the 180 it pulled off with an anti-AI message on main was rejuvenating. The film's disdain towards contemporary society’s normalization and embracement of AI spits the same cathartic venom as Ice Cube passionately shouting "Fuck AI" in The Studio.
The screenplay by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters) is an irreverent, darkly toned, and imaginative satire that is equal parts tech-centric and chaotically kinetic like Looney Tunes. It’s often funny until your laughter turns into nervous chuckles because of how much it reflects our current doomed state. The film shines best in the interspersed Rashomon-style vignettes as each backstory deconstructs the different umbrellas of AI’s corruption while knotting respective character elements to the present. Some vary from blatant pastiche – Mark and Janet’s segment becomes a zombie horror when Mark unintentionally touches a student's phone while they're engaging with AI videos to on TikTok – to wildly inventive – Grace's segment follows her cloning her deceased son, who was killed in a school shooting, in a discreet program but can only afford her son on the “with ads” mode. Its imagination ranges in quality, as Grace's segment is the most realized, though sometimes muddled in themes, as it’s more about the response to the denaturalization of violence above the AI effect itself. Plus, the person highlighted in these minisodes is indicative of the film’s predictability as to who survives the main quest.
Nevertheless, I think the film acutely and tragically underscores humanity's dehumanized state through its anthology format's overall unifying motif of separate age groups' brain-rotting response to AI-infused normalization across various factions of our media exposure.
Violence and Extreme Gore
Haley Lu Richardson in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (Briarcliff Entertainment)
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is Verbinski operating in his earliest form (full Mouse Hunt mode) but at his zaniest with R-rated freedom. Comedically, it bears the spirit of a Family Guy episode, even down to its oddball graphic deaths, wavering from darkly hilarious to outright unpleasant. Nevertheless, each set piece serves as an opportunity for Verbinski to flex his greatest traits: stylish shot composition, kinetic action coordination, and glorious practical destruction. It’s impressive how, on a smaller budget than most of his filmography, he wrangles a spectacle with grand scope and overall thrills, even running laps around modern blockbusters.
I admit the movie's growing use of CGI takes away from the practical fun it's supposed to bring, with the visual quality wavering in real time. I love the layered detail of the Denmark-based Ghost VFX team having to duplicate AI imagery even though it’s all human-made. I can’t wait to see the idiots who don’t know how to research scream, “This movie used AI!” when it’s human-made, mimicking AI generations.
Sam Rockwell gives a spectacular Jack Sparrow-esque comic performance.
Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Georgia Goodman, and Juno Temple in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (Briarcliff Entertainment)
A good Verbinski protagonist is only as eccentric and manic as the filmmaker, something that I’d argue made The Lone Ranger and A Cure for Wellness misfires. Sam Rockwell as The Man From the Future is the epitome of a good Verbinski lead. He carries the unique madness ingrained in the tone, setting forth within the passionate monologue about the future in the opening diner sequence. He's essentially Jack Sparrow if he were a doomsday prepper laced with more daffy energy.
The remaining ensemble cast is fine enough, with Peña and Beetz given little to do, but Temple is often impressive in an unexplored, somber portrayal. Haley Lu Richardson also shines as Ingrid, the film's stealthy emotional core, who shares a wonderful “rise to self-actualization” arc.
As with many of Verbinski's works, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is about 20 minutes too long. What starts as an enticing, darkly comedic anti-AI Magnolia devolves into "blockbuster mode" via a meandering third act that throws every climax idea into one climax. Despite its cool Cronenberg-meets-Pink Floyd dystopian art direction in its final location, I kept checking the time on my phone, ready for the film to wrap up, not even knowing it was over two hours long.
Final Statement
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a fantastic comeback for Verbinski and a biting, twisted critique of the state of our digital age. Albeit muddled in points and overly long, its sheer originality and entertaining visual style are a reminder of why the idiosyncratic filmmaker is one of the finest weirdo visionaries out there.
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