Rent Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025)

The 117th Time's the Charm. - Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die review by griggs

Sam Rockwell walks into a diner wired up like a human bomb and announces he's from the future, and somehow that's the most normal thing about the next two hours.

It's basically Twelve Monkeys with a Black Mirror haircut — looping timelines, a doomed mission, Rockwell channelling proper frayed, hunted energy while clearly having the time of his life. Underneath the chaos it's a pretty vicious satire: evil AI, our addiction to sleepwalking through life on our phones, and a society's weirdly comfortable shrug at horrors it shouldn't. The script's smartest move is making its AI villain a needy pre-pubescent with god-tier powers rather than some cold calculating overlord, which somehow makes the whole apocalypse funnier and more plausible.

The structure is held together with gaffer tape — different stories and perspectives jump about, and a couple of plates wobble. The jokes mostly land, though not all of them. I clocked the budget going almost entirely on the cast rather than the sets, and it works.

Big, fun, properly deranged, and better for it. I'll take that over safe.

Clunky, OTT, AI-slop CGI-dominated Sci-fi Fantasy that Purports to be Biting Satire & Alleged Comedy - Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die review by PV

The deep irony about this film is that it claims to be some sort of profound satire on AI, but is actually little more than AI slop itself, dominated as it is by crash-bang-wallop CGI at every turn.

It is neither profound as satire or original as scifi, and if anyone laughed at this, they have a lower comedy threshold than me, for sure. All influenced by The Matrix, The Terminator films, Zombie films galore, Spielberg's AI, The Fisher King/Brazil in the Terry Gilliam film universe, steam punk etc. Meh. This is NOT the first film to mine the topic of brainrot zombies focused on their smartphones either.

In fact this sort of thing has been done for many decades on film and in novels, esp short stories. One, from 1910, by genteel repressed English author EM FORSTER of ROOM WITH A VIEW fame called THE MACHINE STOPS from 1910. Yes, 1910. It's free to read online if you search.

It reminded me more than anything else of one of the lamer episodes of Dr Who, with loads of running around to a thumping soundtrack (hallmark of Russel T Davies).

This may appeal to lovers of Sci-fi more than me, I do not know. Maybe I'm too old... Truly silly plot and the sort of CGI scenes that 13-year-old boys would come up with in a brainstorming session, which says it all.

Did I care about the characters? No. Did I believe the plot? No. Did I think it was 1 star unwatchably awful. No.

So, 2 stars.

Ambitious hit-and-miss satire - Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die review by Alphaville

The unforgiveable problem with this absurdist, episodic, scatter-gun satire on modern society is that it doesn’t engage the viewer. The first episodes work – zombified students on their phones, a mother having her murdered son cloned – but the whole is an OTT mess. It’s more of an intellectual exercise than an engaging film, built around a ridiculous guy from the future who’s here to save us. I think he’s meant to be funny but he doesn’t half go on. The whole is certainly to be applauded for making a cinematic effort at having something to say, but unfortunately I’d given up caring long before the ridiculous ending with the giant cat.