{"id":2276644,"date":"2026-02-11T00:53:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T00:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2276644"},"modified":"2026-02-11T00:53:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T00:53:30","slug":"good-luck-have-fun-dont-die-review-fun-but-unfocused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/good-luck-have-fun-dont-die-review-fun-but-unfocused\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die\u2019 review: Fun but unfocused"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Inside a diner in Los Angeles, customers scroll through their phones as coffee is poured, burger patties are flipped, food is plated and a selection of condiments is dramatically lit.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, in <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodluckhavefundontdiemovie.com\/\">\u201cGood Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die,\u201d<\/a> the well-meaning but disappointing first film in a handful of years from \u201cThe Ring\u201d director Gore Verbinski, it\u2019s the phones that are important.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON&#039;T DIE | Official Trailer | February 13 - Only in Theaters\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Nm4WbapDzDQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>A hooded man (Sam Rockwell) enters the diner, announcing that he\u2019s from the future, he\u2019s strapped with explosives and, just as he\u2019s done 116 times before this, he\u2019s come to recruit a few of the patrons for an all-important mission \u2014 to alter an artificial intelligence that has made his time \u201ca nightmare apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rockwell (\u201cThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,\u201d \u201cJojo Rabbit\u201d) is terrific in this extended sequence, as he illustrates that he\u2019s met all these folks before, that he\u2019s still trying to find the right combination that will lead to a successful outcome and that, if anyone tries to leave, he\u2019ll blow them all up.<\/p>\n<p>It all started with the phones, he says of the coming mess, folks turning the first few minutes of the day in bed with their devices into all-day affairs, resulting in a population that can\u2019t even be bothered to rise to its feet. Algorithms feed them content they find compelling, and medical devices, hooked to them with tubes, keep them alive. He\u2019s here to right a wrong on the level, he says, of Adolf Hitler and the Segway scooter.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, this crackly opening stretch is the high mark of the comedy-heavy science-fiction adventure penned by Matthew Robinson (\u201cDora and the Lost City of Gold,\u201d \u201cLove and Monsters\u201d). \u201cGood Luck\u201d is an unfocused mish-mash of ideas.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1939708\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone size-article_inline\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Man From the Future, portrayed by Sam Rockwell, center, tries to persuade folks eating at a diner to join him on a dangerous endeavor in &#8220;Good Luck, Have Fun, Don&#8217;t Die.&#8221; (Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Still, there\u2019s fun to be had in some of the wildness that awaits after The Man From the Future finally collects this night\u2019s band of brave souls: teachers Mark (Michael Pe\u00f1a, \u201cA Million Miles Away\u201d) and Janet (Zazie Beetz, \u201cJoker\u201d), distraught mother Susan (Juno Temple, \u201cTed Lasso\u201d), prickly Uber driver Scott (Asim Chaudhry, \u201cPeople Just Do Nothing\u201d), the allergic-to-tech Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson, \u201cUnpregnant\u201d) and a couple of other folks who don\u2019t hang around long enough to justify learning their names.<\/p>\n<p>(The Man originally declines Ingrid\u2019s offer to help \u2014 saying something about her creeps him out, that he doesn\u2019t need the off-her-meds vibes \u2014 but a potentially prophetic spinning bottle of hot sauce that points to her when it stops changes his mind. And thus Ingrid, who gets nose bleeds from Wi-Fi and cellular phones, obviously will prove to be important to the narrative.)<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1939706\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone size-article_inline\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" alt=\"Asim Chaudhry, left, Juno Temple, Michael Pe\u00f1a, Sam Rockwell, Zazie Beetz, and Haley Lu Richardson appear in a scene from &quot;Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die.&quot; (Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)\" width=\"3000\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.news-herald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TNH-L-FilmReview-GoodLuck-WBOX-021326-03.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1\" data-attachment-id=\"1939706\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.news-herald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TNH-L-FilmReview-GoodLuck-WBOX-021326-03.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1 620w,https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.news-herald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TNH-L-FilmReview-GoodLuck-WBOX-021326-03.jpg?fit=780%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1 780w,https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.news-herald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TNH-L-FilmReview-GoodLuck-WBOX-021326-03.jpg?fit=810%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1 810w,https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.news-herald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TNH-L-FilmReview-GoodLuck-WBOX-021326-03.jpg?fit=1280%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1 1280w,https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.news-herald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/TNH-L-FilmReview-GoodLuck-WBOX-021326-03.jpg?fit=1860%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1 1860w\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Asim Chaudhry, left, Juno Temple, Michael Pe\u00f1a, Sam Rockwell, Zazie Beetz, and Haley Lu Richardson appear in a scene from &#8220;Good Luck, Have Fun, Don&#8217;t Die.&#8221; (Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The band of adventurers embarks on a journey that\u2019s both relatively short and, as The Man has promised, is laced with dangers. The intended destination is a house in which a 9-year-old boy is only a brief time away from completing the digital god. There\u2019s no stopping this powerful entity from being created, The Man says, but if the AI safety protocols developed years later can be added to the code now, the future will be saved.<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, Verbinski and Robinson flesh out a few of the characters with flashbacks, starting with Mark and Janet, as the issue of high school students being addicted to their phones is satirized effectively. Let\u2019s just say the word \u201czombies\u201d comes to mind to describe them.<\/p>\n<p>A flashback involving Janet is less successful, the film attempting to offer commentary about the prevalence of school shootings in the United States. One daring early joke lands, but this section goes too far, as well-intentioned as it may be.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, we learn about Ingrid, whose analog-forward boyfriend, Tim (Tom Taylor), is mysteriously gifted a cutting-edge device.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"related left\"\/>\n<p>\u201cGood Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die\u201d doesn\u2019t give off the vibe that it\u2019s all that concerned with making sense in the end, which is good, as it doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s also, at best, vaguely trying to keep a secret.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the day, it\u2019s a time-loop movie, the rare one where we see only one small, if crucial, part of the circle the protagonist is traveling. And, you guessed it, the fun of witnessing other iterations of this hero\u2019s journey is sorely lacking.<\/p>\n<p>It certainly doesn\u2019t help matters that the ending is bloated, contributing to a runtime that\u2019s a bit longer than it needs to be.<\/p>\n<p>This is Verbinski\u2019s first film since his underrated 2017 effort, \u201cA Cure for Wellness.\u201d \u201cGood Luck\u201d lacks the striking looks of that movie and is less close in quality to 2003\u2019s \u201cPirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl\u201d and more toward that fun adventure\u2019s first two lackluster sequels, which he also helmed.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly no fan of AI, Verbinski, according to the film\u2019s production notes, read Robinson\u2019s script back in 2020 and sent it to Rockwell two years later. It finally arrives in theaters this week, at a time when AI is used regularly by many of us, so its relevancy remains. On the other hand, we are being bombarded with AI-inspired cautionary tales, and this one, while just slightly more entertaining than not, fails to stand out from the crowd, despite all its zaniness.<\/p>\n<p>At best, if watched later at home, it may be a reason to put your phone down, at least intermittently.<\/p>\n<h3>\u2018Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die\u2019<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Where:<\/strong> Theaters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>When:<\/strong> Feb. 13.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rated:<\/strong> R for pervasive language, violence, some grisly images and brief sexual content.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Runtime:<\/strong> 2 hours, 14 minutes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stars (of four):<\/strong> 2.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news-herald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inside a diner in Los Angeles, customers scroll through their phones as coffee is poured, burger patties are flipped, food is plated and a selection of condiments is dramatically lit. Ultimately, in \u201cGood Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die,\u201d the well-meaning but disappointing first film in a handful of years from \u201cThe Ring\u201d director Gore Verbinski, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2276645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[439866,30218,344480,440814,369876,378563,440813,360602,416186,439867,359206,440815,400280,304995,51068,23239,391105],"class_list":["post-2276644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-good-luck","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-asim-chaudhry","tag-cautionary-tales","tag-cell-phones","tag-dont-die-review","tag-gore-verbinski","tag-haley-lu-richardson","tag-have-fun","tag-juno-temple","tag-matthew-robinson","tag-michael-pena","tag-movie-reviews","tag-sam-rockwell","tag-technology","tag-zazie-beetz"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\u2018Good-Luck-Have-Fun-Dont-Die-review-Fun-but-unfocused.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2276644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276646,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276644\/revisions\/2276646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2276644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2276644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2276644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}