February 10, 2026
FILM: GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE
DIRECTED BY: GORE VERBINSKI
WRITTEN BY: MATTHEW ROBINSON
STARRING: SAM ROCKWELL, HALEY LU RICHARDSON, JUNO TEMPLE
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Gore Verbinski has a spotty record as a director. He directed a couple of Pirates of the Caribbean films to huge financial success. He won an Oscar for his animated feature Rango and then bombed with the 2013 adaptation of The Lone Ranger. Now, some nine years after his last film comes Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, another high concept project starring Sam Rockwell as a man from the future who enters a diner with a plan to save humanity. The enemy: artificial intelligence, which has destroyed much of the population. It’s a plot with a lot of characters and side stories that attempt to come together to say something meaningful in the end. Ultimately, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
Rockwell’s first scene is a powerful one. He’s big and explosive as he attempts to round up a group of diners to help with his mission. He’s wearing a suit that looks like it was made with a bunch of gadgets and wires. Not sophisticated but haphazardly complex. He shouts and jumps across tables clearly intimidating the stone-faced customers. It’s a strange scene tonally as it appears to be a comical situation that also comes across seriously. One might expect people to fight back or at least try to escape the scene, but they are oddly still. You could say this is poor direction or an illustration of a population that doesn’t quite know what to make out of reality. Before Rockwell enters, they’re all on their phones engaged in whatever forms of reality they choose to follow. This becomes a theme of the film as well as a precursor to even further technology-controlled characters later.
While Rockwell’s mission is the primary adventure we follow, the narrative also flashes back to several of the characters’ lives just before this night. Zazie Beetz and Michael Pena play high school teachers overwhelmed by their disinterested and affectless students who would rather live on their phones. Juno Temple plays the mother of a student fatally injured in a school shooting. She then has her son cloned to recreate his basic essence with a few additional “updated” features, such as his regular “commercials” for a fruit drink during his discussions with her. Then there is Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid, a young woman who makes a living dressing up as a princess for children’s birthday parties. She’s perhaps the most interesting of the characters as she is allergic to cellphones and WIFI.
Each of these sequences, I’d argue, hold together stronger than the film as a whole does. They mostly play out like individual episodes of Netflix’s Black Mirror. Ultimately, they come together in rather overblown if successfully executed special effect scenes. However, I didn’t find these later sequences to be nearly as satisfying as the characters’ back stories and how they reflected the advancement of technology.
While it is the storyline and visuals that will most likely attract and enthrall wider audiences, it is the actors that really shine here. Sam Rockwell isn’t playing one of his more likeable characters, but he is committed to the part and has a commanding but open presence. It’s nice to see Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple with a meaty role. She handles the physical challenges quite well during more action-oriented sequences and nicely modulates scenes which are more emotional. Haley Lu Richardson may be the real standout though. She’s known for her turn playing against the great Jennifer Coolidge on the second season of The White Lotus. She’s great in her role here as a multi-faceted, more serious-minded and somewhat numbed young woman. I also like Dino Fetscher as Blaise, the man who interviews Temple’s character about the cloning process for her son, coming across as callous and a bit ridiculous in his questioning.
Much of the film though does become dark and intense with a few characters dying rather violently. High school students become a 21st Century version of zombies with no thoughts outside of their phone and social media realities. There’s also a creepy 9-year-old boy who is said to be the inventor of the doomed artificial intelligence movement.
I think some people will eat this film up and praise its depiction of the dangers of advancing technology, but I think any gem-like moments come from the smaller scenes which may be even scarier than the high-octane ones are.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die opens this week in theaters everywhere.
FILM: GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE
DIRECTED BY: GORE VERBINSKI
WRITTEN BY: MATTHEW ROBINSON
STARRING: SAM ROCKWELL, HALEY LU RICHARDSON, JUNO TEMPLE
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
Gore Verbinski has a spotty record as a director. He directed a couple of Pirates of the Caribbean films to huge financial success. He won an Oscar for his animated feature Rango and then bombed with the 2013 adaptation of The Lone Ranger. Now, some nine years after his last film comes Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, another high concept project starring Sam Rockwell as a man from the future who enters a diner with a plan to save humanity. The enemy: artificial intelligence, which has destroyed much of the population. It’s a plot with a lot of characters and side stories that attempt to come together to say something meaningful in the end. Ultimately, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
Rockwell’s first scene is a powerful one. He’s big and explosive as he attempts to round up a group of diners to help with his mission. He’s wearing a suit that looks like it was made with a bunch of gadgets and wires. Not sophisticated but haphazardly complex. He shouts and jumps across tables clearly intimidating the stone-faced customers. It’s a strange scene tonally as it appears to be a comical situation that also comes across seriously. One might expect people to fight back or at least try to escape the scene, but they are oddly still. You could say this is poor direction or an illustration of a population that doesn’t quite know what to make out of reality. Before Rockwell enters, they’re all on their phones engaged in whatever forms of reality they choose to follow. This becomes a theme of the film as well as a precursor to even further technology-controlled characters later.
While Rockwell’s mission is the primary adventure we follow, the narrative also flashes back to several of the characters’ lives just before this night. Zazie Beetz and Michael Pena play high school teachers overwhelmed by their disinterested and affectless students who would rather live on their phones. Juno Temple plays the mother of a student fatally injured in a school shooting. She then has her son cloned to recreate his basic essence with a few additional “updated” features, such as his regular “commercials” for a fruit drink during his discussions with her. Then there is Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid, a young woman who makes a living dressing up as a princess for children’s birthday parties. She’s perhaps the most interesting of the characters as she is allergic to cellphones and WIFI.
Each of these sequences, I’d argue, hold together stronger than the film as a whole does. They mostly play out like individual episodes of Netflix’s Black Mirror. Ultimately, they come together in rather overblown if successfully executed special effect scenes. However, I didn’t find these later sequences to be nearly as satisfying as the characters’ back stories and how they reflected the advancement of technology.
While it is the storyline and visuals that will most likely attract and enthrall wider audiences, it is the actors that really shine here. Sam Rockwell isn’t playing one of his more likeable characters, but he is committed to the part and has a commanding but open presence. It’s nice to see Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple with a meaty role. She handles the physical challenges quite well during more action-oriented sequences and nicely modulates scenes which are more emotional. Haley Lu Richardson may be the real standout though. She’s known for her turn playing against the great Jennifer Coolidge on the second season of The White Lotus. She’s great in her role here as a multi-faceted, more serious-minded and somewhat numbed young woman. I also like Dino Fetscher as Blaise, the man who interviews Temple’s character about the cloning process for her son, coming across as callous and a bit ridiculous in his questioning.
Much of the film though does become dark and intense with a few characters dying rather violently. High school students become a 21st Century version of zombies with no thoughts outside of their phone and social media realities. There’s also a creepy 9-year-old boy who is said to be the inventor of the doomed artificial intelligence movement.
I think some people will eat this film up and praise its depiction of the dangers of advancing technology, but I think any gem-like moments come from the smaller scenes which may be even scarier than the high-octane ones are.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die opens this week in theaters everywhere.