Gore’s Dark, Darkly Funny Future

4 stars

A homeless-looking man in a transparent raincoat walks into an LA diner and starts telling customers that if they don’t put down their electronic devices and get up to help him, the world will end. 

Your initial reaction, like that of the diners, is to have him shut up and go away so you can get back to what you were doing (staring at the screen). But what he says starts to make sense, and the Man From the Future saying it – played with passionate conviction by the always fascinating Sam Rockwell – weaves such a spell that when he proclaims “This is where the revolution begins!”, you almost put your hand up to volunteer.

Welcome to the bleak but brilliant world of director Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, the darkest – and funniest – end of the world satire since Stanley Kubrick taught the world to Stop Worry and Love the Bomb in Dr. Strangelove. Like all great satires, Verbinski’s vision of the world is so well executed because it cuts so close to the bone. For example, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes place in an America where school shootings are so commonplace that an industry springs up to help grieving parents simply replace their dead kids with an AI clone that, at least on the outside, is close enough to the real thing. Any differences a parent notices, like a lack of actual emotion in the clone or its tendency to speak like an advertisement when it wants something to drink, only make it that much easier to order a clone of the clone after the next shooting takes place. Sure, it sounds cold, but really only a few degrees colder than US politicians reflexively mouthing “thoughts and prayers’ when a school shooting happens today.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die isn’t just about America’s lack of caring about children killed in schools; it’s about the world’s lack of caring about everything that isn’t handed to them, or subliminally sold to them, through the social media they slavishly stare at on their phones, laptops, and TV screens. It’s also about the Sisyphian efforts of the few fighting to unplug the world before it implodes. The odds are stacked against them – The Man From the Future claims he’s already been to the diner to recruit followers 116 times prior to the time he walks in at the start of the film – but there’s also an underdog’s enthusiasm that keeps the audience rooting for The Man and his followers not to give up.

As compelling as Rockwell is in his dedication to stopping the future as he knows it will be, the other actors cast in his band of rebels are equally effective in selling the story to us, no matter how wild it gets, thanks to the way the film makes room to let us get to know them and about their lives before they went into the diner on that fateful night. Juno Temple (Fargo TV series) is completely compelling as Susan, the mother of a school shooting victim whose passion for her child gives the story the heart and soul it needs. Haley Lu Richardson (The White Lotus TV series) is equally effective as the mysterious Ingrid, a young woman so sickened by technology that she is literally allergic to the internet. And although he’s only in the film for a few minutes, be on the lookout for Dino Fetscher, who is jaw-dropping as Blaise at the Clone Store.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is one of those rare mainstream movies that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, the kind of film you will be envious of others experiencing for the first time, and then enjoy discussing with them for hours when they’re through.