So Hollywood is rightfully worried about how A.I. fakes, perhaps in the (near) future, could disrupt it’s movie-making biz: In the meantime, A.I. is all over the big screen: Gore Verbinski’s new movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is right up that digital alley.
It’s actually pretty good, wacky and frenetic, with an A.I. takeover/apocalypse of sorts at its heart. (Not one to miss a trend, last weekend SNL had a funny commercial about an A.I. product called “Otezla” that was clever.) Sam Rockwell, who had a scene-stealing performance in Season 3 of White Lotus, plays The Man from the Future, both to comic and dramatic effect. The plot is zany, hurried, and at first thoroughly confusing: Rockwell shows up at Norm’s diner in L.A., dressed in rags and plastic like a homeless man, and announces to all patrons that he needs volunteers to help him accomplish a mission for which he was sent to present day from some time in a murky, dystopian future in which humans are ruled by A.I. At first you wonder why the other customers put up with his harangue, but he does have a bomb strapped to his chest (or it looks like one). That’s the splashy/hyper beginning to the action and perhaps the zenith of its confusion.
Once that hostage-situation-of-sorts gets established the movies settles down and the fun starts. A handful of peripheral characters are introduced, who all have some reason to believe Rockwell. When the police come Rockwell and his “volunteers” set off on their Quest: To save the world by installing some A.I. coding safeguards that will prevent it from dominating humankind. The last third or quarter of the movie is the best: It’s at times funny, whimsical, and action-packed. Juno Temple plays a crucial role as a mother with a video-game-obsessed teenager and Haley Lu Richardson (who also starred in Season 2 of White Lotus) as a gal allergic to computers and wifi. The director, Gore Verbinski, is known for a string of big hits, including the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and The Ring (2002), and as crazy as the action gets, everything makes sense by the end.