Good Fortune

Grade: B

Good Fortune opens with the kind of shot you’d expect Tom Cruise to participate in, for real. Keanu Reeves is standing on top of the curved roof of a skyscraper. He’s Gabriel, a guardian angel. He works in the “texting and driving” death prevention department. He’s invisible, sitting in the back seat, and when a driver becomes distracted on their phones, he puts his hand on their shoulder as the score lets out a computerized choir “aah” sound (the kind you can find on any keyboard). This gets their heads back into the game, and disaster is averted.

We leave Gabriel for a little while, as the plot spends some time focusing on Arj (Aziz Ansari, who also single-handedly wrote and directed). He is living out of his car, and doing multiple odd jobs – and I do mean odd. They include waiting in line for people so they don’t have to, delivering for a DoorDash/Uber Eats/Grubhub type company called Foodster, and working at a Home Depot type hardware store called Hardware Heaven. The dodging of product placement is strong with this one. He lucks into a personal assistant job for a millionaire tech bro named Jeff (Seth Rogen). It’s going great, until – confusingly and contrivedly – one slightly bad decision by Arj causes Jeff to abruptly fire him.

Gabriel is worried that the deflated Arj might attempt something drastic, so he violates angel protocol by making himself visible to Arj, and has him switch places with Jeff “for a little while,” so he can see that money can’t buy happiness, the grass only appears greener, everybody has troubles, etc. As Jeff and Arj are still themselves, just with their positions swapped, this raises an issue from a script/storytelling standpoint. Friends, family, and other people in their lives need to have different circumstances/memories as well – but the movie seems to have anticipated this, and makes appropriate changes. Gabriel did this to show the downfalls of what appears to be such a glamorous lifestyle, but in a funny running gag, Arj can’t stop touting to Gabriel about how awesome this is, and he can’t find anything negative at all. This frustrates Gabriel.

Though he’s widely reported as one of the nicest celebrities (always great with fans, down to Earth, willing to talk to anyone), Keanu Reeves is one of the worst actors I’ve ever seen. I usually can’t stand him. This is one of his best performances. The dull, deadpan, mentally vacant, understated, mechanical delivery of his lines – for which he has become notorious – is absolutely perfect for what his Good Fortune character needs to be. Ansari and Rogen are predictable in the way they play their usual types, but I like what they bring to the table here. As Elena, a fellow Hardware Heaven employee who becomes a love interest for Arj, Keke Palmer (who was such a scene-stealer in Jordan Peele’s Nope) is appealing and quite good here. Ansari isn’t spread too thinly to make Good Fortune a success. It’s funny, sweet, sunny, and enjoyable. The biggest aspect I appreciated is that everybody is a nice person – or if they’re not initially, they will be by the end.

Grade: B