Directed and written by Aziz Ansari, Good Fortune looks great on paper with a packed cast of known faces, including Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, and, of course, Keanu Reeves. The film is about an angel, a guy with a bad life, and the need to find a way to keep going in spite of a life that keeps beating you down.
In Good Fortune, Gabriel is a well-meaning angel who just wants to change someone’s life. Being an angel is a job here and after listening to Azrael (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the angel who helps lost souls, talk about saving someone from killing themselves, Gabriel wants to do that too. Only, in his own words, he’s a bit of a “dumb dumb.”
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Kind and gentle, Gabriel’s wings are small because he doesn’t have that much responsibility. The angel of texting and driving, he sits in the back of cars and makes sure people stay on their track by tapping their shoulder and keeping them from accidents. It’s simple, honest work, but it’s not what Gabriel wants to do. He just wants to matter, and to him, stopping someone from texting and driving doesn’t matter.
Good Fortune has a cast that’s perfectly in sync.
Then he finds Arj (Aziz Ansari). A struggling gig worker living in his car, Arj has a part-time job at a hardware store, takes meal deliveries, and performs tasks that others are unwilling to do. Relying on small tips and hoping orders don’t get canceled, it’s hard to say Arj is living. He’s surviving at most, and Gabriel sees that immediately.
When Arj winds up becoming an assistant to a wealthy venture capitalist, Jeff (Seth Rogen), the disparity in his life becomes too much to handle, even if he’s starting to hit it off with Elena (Keke Palmer). To help Arj fall in love with his life again, he tries to show him that the grass isn’t always greener, switching Arj with Jeff, and letting him live the life that he thinks he wants.
This is a story that we all know. The poor person realizes that money can’t solve everything and decides to go back to their horrible life and struggle instead of having it easy. But Good Fortune doesn’t ignore the reality that while money won’t solve all of your problems, it will solve a lot of them. It will help you to live in your car, it will buy you food, it will let you not debase yourself for a 5-star rating in your gig work, and with just some stress alleviated, you can feel like you’re living.
Money doesn’t solve every problem, but Good Fortune understands that it solves a lot of them.
Having grown up extremely poor and faced financial difficulties in my life, I now realize that money would indeed make my life better. And for this story, Aziz Ansari’s script doesn’t ignore that; instead, it calls it out explicitly and offers the audience a chance to understand Arj’s life and why he would rather give up everything that he knows to just feel safe.
The question that Good Fortune asks is about the intangible parts of life that can’t be dictated by money. It’s about relationships with parents and dating, it’s about how you understand the world, and whether or not you want to give it all away. Does the stress from the hardship outweigh the love you have in your life? There is a version of this movie where the answer is yes.
Understanding that Arj’s life is so bad that the angel Gabriel and Jeff are struggling to live it is compelling. For Gabriel, he uses it to understand humans much more and the complexities of life, and for Jeff, he begins to understand how his success and his capital directly rely on people suffering. Good Fortune is a feel-good story, but its heartfelt approach to understanding that money isn’t just the root of evil but a way toward joy is balanced in a way that works perfectly.
Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune is a familiar story with effortless, heartfelt humor.
Still, while the narrative is great, it’s Good Fortune’s stars that drive the film into a special place in my heart. Seth Rogen as Jeff is funny for the most part, especially when it all comes down to him just being a rich tech bro that isn’t entirely dissimilar from a rich Hollywood Star. For those in the audience struggling right now, Arj is immediately recognizable, and his humor, which oscillates between good-natured and self-deprecatory, embodies his position in life.
And for her part, Keke Palmer as Elena is both the beautiful love interest, effortlessly funny, and the standard bearer for the film’s message without ever feeling ham-fisted. On top of that, the surprising element of Good Fortune is how good the chemistry between Palmer and Ansari actually is. The charisma and humor between the two isn’t electric, but it’s grounded and understandable. You can see the world where Elena and Arj are together, and why.
Ultimately, though, Good Fortune reminds audiences that comedy is where Keanu Reeves got his start. He is effortlessly funny as Gabriel with a delivery that never falters. Against Ansari and Rogan, his deeper voice and more deadpan delivery stand out, giving depth to the comedy we’re watching.
Keanu Reeves excels when it comes to comedy in Good Fortune.
Reeves is at his best when he’s the sweet baby deer of an angel experiencing humanity for the first time. He eats for the first time, dances, discovers tacos, and, well, smokes. Reeves plays doey-eyed well, and the humor that comes from his inability to see bad in the world makes Good Fortune all the more entertaining and endearing.
Good Fortune is familiar in its theming and message, but it’s how it approaches it that makes it a film worth watching. Things are bad in the world right now, but the joy that this film brings is too much to ignore. It’s a feel-good movie without the forced niceties and a grounded approach to choosing your life, even when it’s bad.
Good Fortune is playing now in theaters nationwide.
