Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die: An Important Message Gets Lost in a Clunky, Unfocused Action Outing (Blu-ray)

The Film:

Director Gore Verbinski had quite the career going from the early 2000s to the early 2010s, giving us such hits as a remake of "The Ring," the first three "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, and "Rango," which earned him the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. However, his streak quickly came to an end when he directed two back-to-back critical & box office duds, "The Lone Ranger" and "The Cure for Wellness." It's taken nearly a decade for him to finally get back into the director's chair, but at long last he finally makes his return with "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die," a strange little film about the dangers of AI. After stumbling quite a bit with his last two features, will this mark the beginning of a new streak for the Oscar-winning filmmaker, or will it merely be a third strike in a row?

The film begins with a man (Sam Rockwell) walking into a diner, declaring that he's from the future, and trying to recruit volunteers to help him save the world. He also tells them that this is his 117th attempt to do so, dropping bits of info here and there to prove that he's done this before. He's eventually able to round up several people, including Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), couple Mark (Michael Peña) & Janet (Zazie Beetz), Susan (Juno Temple), and Scott (Asim Chaudhry), for the mission, which involves locating a nine-year-old boy and installing safety measures on an AI he's creating that will be disastrous for humanity without them. However, as the man's latest group quickly finds out, this is going to be much more difficult than it appears to be.

"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" is one of those films that wants to entertain while delivering an important message, which in this case has to do with the dangers of AI & the over-use of technology causing great damage to humanity. It starts off well enough by giving us a mildly-intriguing premise about an unnamed man from the future trying to get help to save the world, a rather wild scenario that could go in several fascinating directions. However, screenwriter Matthew Robinson almost immediately makes a confounding structural decision that ends up being rather detrimental in that he chooses to intersperse backstories for several of the characters in the group throughout the main storyline, effectively interrupting it over and over with pointless filler that only serves to over-emphasize its warning about AI.

As a result, the film feels heavily distracted as it tries to tell its tale. There are instances where backstory can be important in order for the audience to feel something for or sympathize with the characters, but for an in-the-moment action film like this, it's really not going to matter, especially when it's shoehorned into the main plot as a kind of afterthought. It also leads to the film being much longer than it needs to be, a very common action staple that could've easily been rectified by keeping the focus where it should've been all along, but instead we get about 90-minutes worth of material stretched out to a 134-minute runtime. As I constantly find myself having to remind directors and/or writers, you need to suit the runtime to the story. If you're drowning it in excessive length, you're not doing it any favors, which is sadly the case here.

Overall, while "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" does have an important message about letting AI take over our lives, it's handled in such a clumsy manner that it ends up getting buried under the film's attempt to mix it with an action-based main plot & clunky backstories, with some of these being so heavy-handed that they only add to its uneven tone. There was indeed an intriguing idea at the heart of this project, but it really needed a total structural overhaul if it was ever going to have a chance of working, because as it is, it's more than fair to say that it's simply a bit of a mess that's unable to keep its focus on

its most important elements.

Video/Audio:

"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" comes to Blu-ray in a 2.39:1, 1080p High Definition transfer of decent quality. The picture is a little dark & murky throughout, even in well-lit scenes, but it's still quite watchable. The Dolby Atmos audio track, on the other hand, is fantastic, giving you all of the dialogue, sound effects, and music in outstanding quality. Overall, while the image could've used a little more sharpening, Universal has still done a fine job in both areas for the film's Blu-ray debut.

Special Features:

The Making of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (5 Minutes): A brief behind the scenes look at the making of the film, featuring interviews with the cast.

Conclusion:

Gore Verbinski's "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" wants to deliver an important message about the dangers of AI within the framework of a silly action flick, but thanks to a confounding structure that has it getting interrupted for long stretches of time with pointless, clunky backstories, that message ends up getting drowned out in an over-long, heavily-distracted narrative that ultimately ends up being a bit of a mess.

Score: 2.5/5

Available on Blu-ray starting today.

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