{"id":13991,"date":"2026-02-03T19:54:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T00:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13991"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:29:10","slug":"good-luck-have-fun-dont-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/02\/03\/good-luck-have-fun-dont-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Briarcliff\/Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 134 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language, violence, some grisly images, brief sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gore Verbinski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matthew Robinson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Geoff Zanelli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Whitaker\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 13, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Dino Fetscher, Anna Acton, Daniel Barnett, Dominique Maher, Adam Burton, Georgia Goodman.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I almost didn\u2019t see Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/strong>. The East Coast was slammed by a huge snow storm over the weekend. It was followed by sleet that turned the streets into a sheet of ice. My AMC was closed on Sunday and for part of Monday. I figured the Screen Unseen event schedule for that night was canceled. I resigned myself to staying in. When I saw that the theater would be operational after all, I decided to brave the icy conditions and see what cinematic goodie AMC was offering up this week. I\u2019m so glad I did.<\/p>\n

\u00a0CULT FILM ALERT!<\/strong> That\u2019s right, I\u2019m sounding the alarm. We\u2019ve got a cult film waiting to happen here. Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3) and written by Matthew Robinson (Dora and the Lost City of Gold), Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/strong> is an insane hybrid of dystopian sci-fi, time travel adventure, action and comedy. It starts when a seemingly deranged man (Rockwell, Jojo Rabbit) bursts into an L.A. diner and announces he\u2019s from the future. It causes the patrons to look up from their phones briefly. He goes on to say he\u2019s here to stop an apocalyptic event with the help of some of the people gathered here tonight. Specifically, he\u2019s looking for the right combination of people and has yet to find it. His mission has failed every time. This is his 118th<\/sup> try. He needs to get it right this time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0He certainly looks like one of those delusional homeless people forever carrying on about the end being near. Clad in a clear plastic raincoat with plastic tubes hanging all over him and sporting an unkempt beard, he appears to be an ideal candidate for a padded room at the local asylum. But he seems to know some of the patrons in the joint by name, rejecting some because he knows how it will end for them. He might be insane or he might not be. Either way, he has a job to do and it has to be done tonight.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The unnamed time traveler\u2019s team consists of married high school teachers Mark (Pena, Ant-Man) and Janet (Beetz, Joker), grieving mother Susan (Temple, Venom: The Last Dance), suicidal party princess Ingrid (Richardson, Split), burly tough guy Scott (Chaudhry, People Just Do Nothing) and a few others. Their mission entails getting out of the diner with police surrounding the pace and making it six blocks to the home of the individual creating the AI device that will bring about the end of civilization and humanity by weaponizing everybody\u2019s addiction to tech. It\u2019s not as easy as it sounds.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In keeping with the story\u2019s always off-kilter vibe, Verbinski doesn\u2019t take a direct narrative route to the finish line. He pauses the action to provide backstories on some of the team members. They\u2019re interesting and more importantly, relevant to what\u2019s happening. On his first day at the school, Mark accidentally triggers an event when he touches a student\u2019s phone. Pyramids appear on all the kids\u2019 phones, putting them in a trance as they come after Mark and his less-than-pleased wife. We meet Susan right after her son is killed in a school shooting. Instead of a grief therapist, she\u2019s referred by a group of smiling Stepford moms to a facility that can help her in a most unexpected and definitely creepy way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The most interesting character of the bunch is Ingrid, a tech-adverse girl who gets nosebleeds every time she\u2019s in close proximity to WiFi. Her boyfriend Tim (Taylor, House of the Dragon) stays away from it too. That is, until he becomes addicted to VR and leaves Ingrid to live in that world. It leaves her depressed and ready to end it all. That\u2019s when fate comes knocking in the form of a self-proclaimed savior who looks like a crazy homeless guy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/strong> is the movie I wish the highly overrated Everything Everywhere All at Once had been. It\u2019s original, wildly irreverent and unapologetically bonkers. It\u2019s obviously the work of a twisted mind (i.e. Robinson) who clearly chose the right director to hand it off to. Verbinski may be best known for the megahit Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but he\u2019s not one of Hollywood\u2019s most conventional filmmakers. Look no further than his last two films, The Lone Ranger (2013) and A Cure for Wellness (2017). The former (a guilty pleasure!) is NOT your typical summer blockbuster; it\u2019s more like an expensive peyote trip. The latter is a mind-bending Lovecraftian nightmare. Even the Brad Pitt-Julia Roberts vehicle The Mexican (2001) doesn\u2019t fit comfortably into the action-rom-com mold. This guy doesn\u2019t play by the rules. He proudly breaks every one with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Verbinski, in turn, chose the right guy to play the film\u2019s unbalanced (?) protagonist, the Time Traveler with No Name. Rockwell manages a tricky balance here, keeping his character completely ungrounded while still maintaining control. He\u2019s all over the map emotionally playing him as alternately and simultaneously manic, sarcastic, glib and sad. He\u2019s just the leader a small disparate squad of misfits needs. Everybody does a great job in their roles, but Richardson steals the show as Ingrid, a rebellious twenty-something who plays a crucial role (one she doesn\u2019t yet realize) in what\u2019s going on. She carries herself with complete confidence like she was born to play an unlikely heroine.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I love how Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die<\/strong> entertains while warning about the dangers of technology if left unchecked. It really is like a drug with all the folks who can\u2019t stop scrolling at the expense of living life in real time. It\u2019s funny, trippy and mind-bending. It\u2019s absurd and intelligent. It\u2019s a wild and wired ride on a roller coaster through a funhouse. And it has a giant kitty cat too. How can you possibly pass that up?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Briarcliff\/Sci-Fi-Action-Adventure-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 134 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language, violence, some grisly images, brief sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gore Verbinski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matthew Robinson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Geoff Zanelli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Whitaker\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 13, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, Asim Chaudhry, Tom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/rockwell-film-good-luck-hav.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13994,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13991\/revisions\/13994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}