When you get put into director jail, I guess you get bitter. Gore Verbinski hasn’t made a movie in nine years, and a good movie in 14 about a CGI Gecko in the desert. Years seething and hoping for a chance at another project has made Gore jaded…and more interesting. And it’s not just the great title: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (GLHFDD) either.
It’s 10:10 PM in a diner in Los Angeles. Fate brings a strangely dressed man (Sam Rockwell) into the diner, preaching about the end of the world. He needs some combination of a group of people in this diner to help him, hoping for a winner this time, as if he’s done this before. Coming along for the ride this time are a married couple Mark (Michael Pena) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), scout troop leader Bob (Daniel Barnett), pie lover Marie (Georgia Goodman), shy back booth lady Susan (Juno Temple) and a princess cosplaying woman with a death wish, Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a strange concoction to supposedly save the world from the AI apocalypse.
Director Jail must have sent Gore Verbinski into the deep, dark, bad places on the Internet, trapped in a phone created Kafka esque nightmare. Thank goodness that time and creativity was not wasted. GLHFDD takes a gun and points it down the barrel of the worst of society’s ills today, taking aim, and firing early and often. Through this ragtag bunch, as they get trapped/bogged down, Verbinski flashes us back in time, giving us the backstory of one of the team members, who will get us out of that predicament. But Matthew Robinson’s script and Verbinski’s direction of it are so good I almost didn’t care about going back to the present. The movie’s out for blood: Mark and Janet’s sequence is so darkly cynical towards schooling that I was cackling with cruel glee…until we get to Susan’s story, the highlight of the film. Her plight is dark magic in movie form, daring the audience to laugh as AI driven solutions suck the humanity out of Susan, leaving behind something evil…and unbelievably funny. And even more scary, will have you feeling we’re only one or two steps away from the world GLHFDD takes place in, a great sign of a great satire.
And when the movie’s not making a point, it’s got Sam Rockwell and Verbinski’s imagination to carry us along. The Oscar winning Rockwell was made for a role like this, motormouthing his way through complex incomprehensible descriptions while being a charming wiseass smartest person in the room. While wearing the silliest outfit double daring us to take him seriously. The further Don’t Die goes, the more threatening the AI gets, upping the action and hiding it’s Ghostbusters like extravaganza until the very end. The big 3rd act battle gets lost in the sauce a bit, but still leaves room for a Rockwell one liner or great physical gag or two that you won’t see coming, one that made me laugh so hard I got shushed in the theater.
So welcome back Gore! Now that you’re back on the market, I hope you got that anger out of you, and get to another happy place again. Perhaps its time for Rango 2? Or do we try The Lone Ranger: 2 Wrong Co-Stars Make a Right? Up to you…but I think you know where my allegiances, and malevolent jokes, lie.