Delight is hard to come by at the movies these days, and most of us will take any little scrap we can get. Good Fortune, Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut—he also wrote the film and stars in it—may be a movie made up of scraps, but plenty of them throw off sparks of joy. Like One of Them Days, a surprise hit earlier this year, Good Fortune has the cojones to confront one of the major issues of the day: that too many people are working too hard for too little money, while the billionaires at the top sit back and watch the dollars roll in, with no regard for anyone but themselves. The movie’s tone counts for a lot: it’s silly and funny, and you never feel you’re trapped in a civics lecture. Good Fortune is amiable, but it also has some bite.
Ansari stars as Arj, an underemployed Los Angeles documentary-film editor who’s been reduced to living in his car, barely staying afloat by juggling a series of dismal Taskrabbit-y jobs. One minute he’s assembling furniture, the next he’s standing in line at a fancy bakery to pick up an order for some rich guy—or at least someone who’s better off than he is. One of his gigs is part-time work at a big box lumber and hardware store. It’s there that he meets Elena (played by the effervescent Keke Palmer, also one of the stars of One of Them Days), a furniture maker and smart cookie who’s trying to unionize the store’s workforce.
Arj is just one of Earth’s poor creatures trying to get by. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a cadre of guardian angels watching over us all, one of whom is Keanu Reeves’ Gabriel: he gazes down upon the sorry human population from on high, much like the celestial beings in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. Gabriel, sporting a balmacaan raincoat and mini wings (he’s a junior angel who hasn’t yet earned the full-sized ones of his elder peers), has been assigned with preventing accidents caused by texting and driving. We see him lurking in the backseat of one vehicle or another, reaching out to gently touch the shoulder of an offending driver. Good Fortune is wholly attuned to Reeves’s unique serotonin-releasing talents.
But even though Gabriel’s job seems like a worthy one for any guardian angel, especially in Los Angeles, he wishes he could do more to truly change the fates of unhappy humans. He asks big boss angel Martha (Sandra Oh, in a shimmering tunic) for a better assignment. When she refuses, he takes the step of trying to change one life in a more drastic way, and Arj becomes his project. Arj has miraculously landed a great job as a gofer for a rich tech bro, Jeff (Seth Rogen), though he just as quickly loses it for misusing Jeff’s company Amex card. Gabriel pulls a few mystical strings so down-and-out Arj can switch places with Jeff for two weeks: the plan is that Arj will realize money can’t buy happiness and will volunteer to go back to his own life.
Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t happen: the movie knows, as we do, that anyone who tells you “Money won’t solve life’s problems” is at least 99 percent wrong. Martha strips Gabriel of his angel status, and the next thing you know, he’s toiling away as a dishwasher at an all-you-can-eat Korean buffet, struggling to make a buck like any old schmoe.
With Good Fortune, Ansari walks a tricky line: the movie, much like One of Them Days, is perceptive about real-life problems without descending into dull proselytizing. Rogen’s Jeff, having been thrust into Arj’s former life, is deeply unhappy at having to actually work for a living, standing in line to pick up food orders for guys who are living the type of life he used to; finally, he’s getting a taste of how the other half lives. Though Ansari mostly keeps the story light, he’s quick to point out the evils of the gig economy: no one should have to pee in a bottle because their delivery job won’t allow for a bathroom break. At the same time, he’s alive to life’s small pleasures. Jeff and Gabriel join forces to make their lives less miserable, and at one point Jeff introduces his former-angel friend to the Earthly joys of hamburgers and milkshakes. The look on Gabriel’s face as he bites into his first chicken nugget is the equivalent of the heavens opening up and showering blessings upon us all. And who doesn’t need a little of that in their life?
Good Fortune is a charming debut, but there’s one blot on its otherwise sunny surface: Ansari’s recent participation in the state-sponsored Riyadh Comedy Festival. Ansari has pedaled hard to defend his acceptance of a paycheck from Saudi Arabia, with its record of serious human rights violations. He has also offered to donate part of his earnings, as he said during a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, “to causes that support free press and human rights,” among them Human Rights Watch (though representatives of that organization have said that any donations from comedians who performed at the festival would be refused). It’s hard to get around this: watching Ansari turn on the charm in Good Fortune is at this moment a bit of a turnoff. Yet the movie has such a sweet spirit that it makes you want to believe that a good person can simply make the wrong choice. Maybe what really matters is where Ansari goes from here. At least, for now, he recognizes that it’s an indignity for any worker to have to pee into a bottle.
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