Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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In a madcap turn, Gore Verbinski (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) directs “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.” The film is a colorful version of the Daniels’ “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Though the film is a bit too silly and overly long, it is creative and has an excellent performance by Sam Rockwell in one of his best roles yet.

A man covered in plastic and wiring (Sam Rockwell) enters a diner and tells the packed restaurant that he has a warning from the future. The earth is about to be swallowed up by an Artificial Intelligence system, beginning an extinction unless the customers join him. The man becomes a screaming whirling dervish.

Sam Rockwell’s character is very like Robin Williams’s outing in Terry Gilliam’s “The Fisher King” (1991).

The diners pay no attention glued to their phones.

A small group of customers take pity on the man and agree to go along with him. He tells them that a nine-year-old genius mastermind is about to control their minds making it impossible for freedom of thought.

In a high school, students become murderous zombies.

It takes a considerable amount of time in the film for the future man to assemble his army to save civilization.

There are many subplots too numerous to mention. There is a teacher (Michael Pena), a cosplay princess (Haley Lu Richardson), and) a psychological victim of a school shooting in which her son was killed (Juno Temple).

The group consolidates forces to combat a spaced out and techno-spiritual nine-year-old (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) in his quest for global domination.

There are stunning images here: a child on top of a prism resembling a Gandhi of cyberspace, a giant murdering monster made of thousands of kittens, a vast landscape of birthday cakes and several octopuses composed of angry wires.

Like the aforementioned “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” so much is included that it overstimulates the senses, but Sam Rockwell has enough wild spirit to hold it all together.

While the film is a visual maniac in multiples (quoting films from “The Substance” to “Star Wars” and George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”) and defies logic to the point of distraction, the it points to our unique fear of techno overreach and is well on its way to being a Cult Classic.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com