Good Fortune’ Review: Keanu Reeves Gets His Wings
Aziz Ansari stars in his own directorial debut, which features the action star in a winning comic turn as an angel struggling to help humanity.
What’s it like to be the guardian angel of people who text while driving? “It’s a lot,” says a winged protector named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) in the celestially adjacent comedy “Good Fortune.” “People really love doing it.” In the opening minutes we watch as a woman nearly crashes her car while looking up the Wikipedia page for ketchup.
In other words, this movie gets us. Well played, Aziz Ansari. For the longtime “Parks and Rec” star’s directorial debut, he has written himself a witty if occasionally finger-wagging script about wealth inequality as approached from the viewpoint of stressed-out gig-economy workers. Notwithstanding some clunky moments, Mr. Ansari not only engineers up-to-the-minute twists on the musty Hollywood angel movie, but decorates his story with clever dialogue and wicked observations about street-level existence in the City of Angels.
Like Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Gabriel is a bit of a woebegone misfit in a long coat who needs assistance from the humans he is supposed to be assisting. Yearning to heal lost souls instead of merely preventing rear-end collisions, he decides to intercede in the struggles of Arj (Mr. Ansari), a Los Angeleno whose profession is documentary film editor but who gets by on whatever one-off assignments he can pick up through an app called Task Sergeant. A day’s work might consist of waiting in line for the city’s most-desired cinnamon buns, then finding he won’t be paid at all because someone hit the cancel button on the app. His problems are small but frustrating and seemingly intractable. So many torments get thrown at him he’s like a Job who needs a job.
An assignment to clean up the garage of a wealthy venture capitalist named Jeff (Seth Rogen) leads to full-time work, as Jeff’s assistant, in one of those palatial hilltop lairs that says “tech bro,” “supervillain,” or both. But after Arj misuses a corporate credit card on a date with a charming hardware-store employee (Keke Palmer), he gets thrown back into the land of the underemployed. Life looks bleak. Gabriel, paying him a visit, suggests that being a rich man (such as Jeff, for instance) has its surprising downsides. A sprinkle of heavenly magic, and Arj can be taught a valuable lesson—by trading places with Jeff and finding out that wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Except it turns out to be much, much more than it’s cracked up to be. Arj can hardly believe his good fortune. It’s a wonderful life, if you’re rich; not so much when you’re a gig worker. Instead of appreciating his former existence, Arj wants to forget it ever happened. Meanwhile, a flummoxed Jeff gets demoted to Arj’s level, where one’s viability can be endangered by getting a one-star review from a customer who is angry that the restaurant didn’t put extra ranch dressing in the bag. Also, robots are taking the delivery jobs.
As Gabriel takes on human form and becomes a sort of arbitrator, therapist and buddy to Jeff and Arj in hopes of sorting out the mess he created, Mr. Ansari proves a stronger writer than director. His pacing isn’t quite snappy enough and he makes the odd choice to play most scenes without any musical cues in the background, which causes some scenes to feel a bit lifeless. But the script is a trove of great lines: “I want a meeting with God, right now!” demands Jeff.
The movie makes a perfectly sound point about the difficulties gig workers face without being blatant about it, until it gets blatant about it. Mr. Ansari provides one character with what’s meant to be a stirring monologue about how CEOs should simply give out big raises lest the workers of the world unite against them. The speech not only comes across as awkwardly strident for a movie that is otherwise sly, but also daft for a movie that is otherwise smart: Businesses can’t just decide to be nice to their employees by paying everyone more.
Still, the high-concept star-driven comedy is too rare at the movies these days, and the leads in “Good Fortune” earn a lot of laughs. Mr. Rogen is more than comfortable as a well-heeled mogul who’s essentially likable albeit arrogant, and if Mr. Ansari comes across as too intelligent to be so chronically underemployed, he makes for a fine everyman.
The real winner here, however, is Mr. Reeves. It’s a shame he got sidetracked into action-hero franchises. His flat, halting delivery and air of slightly baffled naiveté remain charmingly effective comic tools, just as they have been in his comedies dating back to when he played Ted “Theodore” Logan. I’m not sure who could get a bigger laugh out of Gabriel’s indisputable observation, “I’m kind of a dum-dum.”
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