Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die got me in the mood for more wacky, time-travelling fun, and these 6 sci-fi comedies perfectly fit the bill

Gore Verbinski ends his 10-year break from directing with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, a madcap comedy that sees Sam Rockwell's Man From the Future drag a ragtag team of LA locals into his world-saving scheme. It's a timely take on technology, with Rockwell's rumpled protagonist set on stopping a kid from creating an AI that'll go on to destroy the world – and an awful lot of fun.

Ahead of its UK release (it came out in the US last Friday), we've been thinking back on some of the best time travel movies. Specifically, we've been thinking back on the best time travel movies that are kind of off-kilter and skew more comedic, like cult classic Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and French surrealist flick Incredible But True.

We've attempted to sum up why those titles are so good below, alongside four others that perfectly fit the bill. You won't find the likes of Groundhog Day or Back to the Future here, that'd be all too predictable – so we've elected to champion more obscure must-sees. Nor will you see serious, core-shaking joints such as Interstellar, since we're concentrating on films that flex their funny bones. If you'd rather focus on what's to come, our guide to all the upcoming movies.

Incredible But True

No one does surreal quite like Quentin Dupieux. So much so, in fact, that sometimes his movies can be a little jarring and difficult to watch. That can't be said for Incredible But True, a a brilliantly cohesive sci-fi comedy that sees a woman discover that the tunnel in her basement sends those who go through it forward in time 12 hours. Not only that, but it makes them three days younger too, supposedly.

It doesn't take long for Marie (Léa Drucker) to become obsessed with the tunnel, slipping through it any chance she gets throughout the day – much to the dismay of her increasingly exasperated husband Alain (Alain Chabat), who reckons they should just board it up and never think of it again.

As if that's not enough weirdness for one film, there are also characters controlling their electronic new penises from smartphones, morally ambiguous estate agents, and rotten apples full of ants. Time travel movies tend to be epic and large in scope by nature, so it's refreshing to see a darkly funny, domesticated spin on the idea.

Time Bandits

Released in 1985, Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits follows Kevin (Craig Warnock), a self-proclaimed nerd who's obsessed with all things history. One night, he gets the shock of his life when six dwarfs emerge from his closet and tell him that they used to work for the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson) and that they're now on a mission to steal all kinds of treasure from different periods.

Given his expertise, they're keen for Kevin to tag along and help them – and of course, the youngster finds it impossible to say no. Together, the ragtag troupe manage to drop in on Napoleon (Ian Holm), Robin Hood (John Cleese) and King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) before the Supreme Being catches up with them. Old-school, chaos brimming with British wit.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

I love me a stoner comedy, and there's not many better than Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Led by a totally committed Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves, it's a raucous, heartfelt tale about two high school kids who enlist the help of a man from the future to help them pass a history assignment.

It's super goofy, but the best part is that its jokes aren't specific to the time in which it was released, so it's still endlessly watchable in 2026. "Be excellent to each other", the film's tagline, is perhaps an even more important phrase nowadays than it was in 1989, too.

Palm Springs

Starring Andy Samberg and The Penguin's Cristin Milioti, Palm Springs follows two 20-somethings who bond over being two of the few singletons at a destination wedding. Sarah, Milioti's character, is the bride's half-depressed half-sister, while Samberg's Nyles is more of a carefree, fun-loving spirit. At least on the surface, anyways.

After hitting it off, the twosome venture into the desert for a smooch, where Nyles is shot by a mysterious assailant wielding a bow-and-arrow and crawls into a cave. He orders Sarah not to follow him but she does – and gets stuck inside the same time loop as Nyles has been enduring for countless weeks. With that, Sarah embarks on a crash course in quantum physics, ultimately trying to stop the pair of them for enduring a surprisingly exhausting fate of repetitive partying and nuptial dramas.

Samberg and Milioti have palpable chemistry and it's the perfect combination of thrills, gags, and romance. I'm never going to complain about a film with a sunny vacation setting, either.

Army of Darkness

Long before he was directing a bloodsoaked Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien in Send Help, Sam Raimi was making Bruce Campbell do all sorts of wild things in Army of Darkness. Having tested the waters with its comedy-leaning predecessor Evil Dead II, the filmmaker turned the zaniness up to 11 with the drastically-departed trilogy capper that sees protagonist Ash Williams get trapped in 1300s Europe.

On arrival, he saves a bunch of local knights from a Deadite and is immediately hailed a hero – but getting home proves a much harder task. To return to his time, he must find the Necronomicon and, it turns out, drink a magic potion that'll let him sleep so long he'll wake up in the early 1990s.

Those looking for the scares and gore of the earlier flicks may be disappointed. But don't be fooled by the lukewarm 68% score on Rotten Tomatoes, it's a bone-a-filled... sorry, bonafide cult classic centering a gonzo performance by Campbell and a whole load of medieval mayhem.

Timestalker

If you're a hopeless romantic like me, you'll be all too familiar with the concept of lovers being destined to meet one another in every lifetime. Thanks to sci-fi and fantasy, it can sometimes play out literally across movies and TV – like Hawkgirl and Hawkman in Legends of Tomorrow and Tom and Izzi in Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. Alice Lowe's take on the trope, however, is deliciously twisted.

In the film's first act, the writer-director is introduced as lowly maidservant Agnes, who immediately falls in love with a heretical preacher right before he's set to hang. All googly-eyed and smitten, she attempts to stop his execution – and winds up getting killed in the process. When we meet her again, she's resurrected (and married to a brutish Nick Frost) in 1793. That is, until she meets her former paramour (Aneurin Barnard) again. The rub, though, is that in every era, he's kind of repulsed by her.

What follows is a kooky, giggle-worthy odyssey of sorts, as Agnes learns to accept that her crush is unrequited and why she shouldn't keep putting herself in harms' way for a man who wouldn't look twice at her. Come for the zany premise, stay for the colorful costumes, dream-like cinematography, and 90-minute runtime.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is out now in theaters. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.