Directed by: Aziz Ansari
Distributed by: Lionsgate
Written by Anna Harrison
50/100
Angels as bureaucratic workers is not a new idea in fiction; everything from “Defending Your Life” to even “Supernatural,” that greatest of CW shows, has played with the afterlife-as-a-bureaucracy shtick. Aziz Ansari’s “Good Fortune” is the latest in that long line of heavenly stories, featuring the angel Gabriel (Keanu Reeves)—no, not that one—whose illustrious job is to stop the denizens of Los Angeles from texting and driving. From personal experience, I know this to be impossible, and it seems that the lack of meaning in his existence has sent Gabriel on the kind of depressive spiral that I feel while driving on Highland Avenue. Gabriel wants to save a lost soul, you see, not just your average idiot driving on the 405.
Enter Arj (Ansari), a down-on-his-luck gig worker sleeping out of his car and taking odd jobs from the movie’s copyright-free equivalent of Taskrabbit. While he has experience as a documentary editor, the expense of living in Los Angeles and the dearth of jobs in the entertainment industry right now have got him doing such illustrious jobs as waiting in line for a cinnamon roll on behalf of someone else. It has sapped him of all signs of life until he books a gig from tech bro Jeff (Seth Rogen), who hires Arj as his personal assistant… and gives him a company card. A $350 dinner date with girlfriend Elena (Keke Palmer) on the company card later, and Arj is fired, leaving him in worse spirits than before.
Enter Gabriel, who defies his rule-loving boss Martha (Sandra Oh) to intervene with Arj. After a disastrous attempt to show Arj how happy his life could be—he moves to Texas with Elena, where they can’t pay for their dog’s hospital bills, and has to pee in water bottles as a driver for the copyright-free equivalent of Amazon—Gabriel attempts to make things better by showing Arj how terrible Jeff’s life is. Thus Arj finds himself living in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, taking business meetings over expensive sushi, and proving that money can buy happiness. This is no “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Unfortunately, Ansari is no Jimmy Stewart, either. Though his direction has moments of inspiration and “Good Fortune” looks better than your average studio comedy lately, his performance as Arj is one-note and grating. His lines constantly end in a pitch higher than where they started, leaving Arj feeling like a petulant child; this works when his manchild tendencies come out, but is actively detrimental to the movie’s more dramatic scenes and reflections on the gig economy and the hardships of everyday life. It becomes simply impossible to believe that Arj is a man who truly feels like he is at his wit’s end, that he spends his nights shuffling from parking lot to parking lot and falling asleep in Denny’s, or even that he’s someone the audience should take seriously at all.
Rogen and Reeves, however, are a comedy duo for the ages. After Gabriel’s mess with Arj, he is stripped of his wings and forced to become human; with no one else to rely on, he and Jeff turn to each other, and begin learning how to do things like wash dishes or, in Gabriel’s case, eat. Reeves’s propensity for pronouncing every word like it’s the first time he’s said it is utilized to excellent effect as Gabriel learns about the agony of weekly checks and the ecstasy of smoking a cigarette. Gabriel even crashes one of Elena’s pro-union rallies to rant about “chicken nuggies” and discuss how lovely dogs are, and Reeves does this with such gusto that he nearly saves the entire movie.
Alas, since Arj has to carry the dramatic weight of the story, “Good Fortune” does not live up to its title. In all fairness, even in a better actor’s hands it might have only been mediocre—its commentary on The State of the World is shallow, and its apparently sincere solutions to said State of the World are laughably naive at best and actively insulting at worst. This might not be an issue had “Good Fortune” not positioned itself as understanding of these problems and just like the audience (no really, these celebrities definitely know what it’s like to struggle in Los Angeles), but for a movie to situate itself as such and then have its grand solution essentially be “CEOs should pay their workers more” or “crowdfund your dreams” is a sign that, perhaps, everyone involved should have looked a little more before they leapt.
“Good Fortune” Trailer
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