There’s something oddly comforting about watching an angel crumble under capitalism–knowing the grind can affect even the divine. "Good Fortune" opens with that beautiful contradiction — divine wisdom meets minimum wage — and never really lets go of it. It’s a film about luck, imbalance, and what happens when the cosmic and the common are forced to share a cramped apartment with overdue bills and a broken coffee machine.
Aziz Ansari’s direction leans straight into that collision. It’s the kind of comedy that feels like it was written during a quarter-life crisis, one hand on a self-help book and the other refreshing a banking app. The film takes the shape of a body-swap farce — a down-on-his-luck delivery worker and a smug millionaire literally switch lives — but it’s dressed up as something stranger: a celestial experiment gone wrong, conducted by an angel who’s tired of his rigid routine.
Keanu Reeves plays that angel, Gabriel, with a kind of enlightened exhaustion that’s both hilarious and weirdly profound. He floats through the first act like a yoga instructor who’s seen the face of God and promptly forgotten where he parked. He’s serene, cryptic, and gloriously unbothered. That is, until he becomes human. Then he starts working three jobs, develops lower-back pain, and takes up smoking because it's one of his small joys in life. That, in itself, is the film’s best joke: heaven might be eternal, but the nine-to-five will break you faster.
Reeves is the film’s secret weapon — not because he’s reinventing himself, but because he’s simply amplifying what we already love about him. He’s awkward, gentle, deeply sincere, and occasionally seems like he’s just wandered onto set between meditations. And somehow, that’s perfect. Watching him chain-smoke through a breakdown feels like watching Neo try to file his taxes.
The broader message is clear enough: life is a scam designed to look like opportunity. Ansari and Seth Rogen bounce off each other with the jittery energy of two men who realise they’ve both been short-changed by existence — one spiritually, one financially. The film pokes fun at the hollow platitudes of self-improvement culture while admitting, with an exhausted shrug, that most people are just trying to manifest a full fridge.
It’s not a perfect comedy. The laughs come in waves, and some of them crash into clichés before they properly land. You can feel Ansari holding back when the film begs for chaos — the script occasionally feels like it’s been filtered through HR, as they strip this and that out. But there’s something disarmingly human about its restraint. For every joke that misses, there’s a line or a look that lands with quiet honesty. It’s not hysterical, but it’s heartfelt, and that counts for something in a world that’s permanently running on low battery.
What "Good Fortune" nails — better than it probably realises — is that dull ache of modern existence. The feeling that no matter what cosmic deal you think you’ve struck, someone else got the better clause. It’s a film that laughs through the pain of ordinary struggle, then hands you a half-burnt cigarette and says, “Yeah, same.”
By the end, I wasn’t rolling on the floor or weeping in existential despair, but I was smiling — the kind of quiet, knowing smile that comes from recognising your own absurdity on screen. It’s not divine revelation, but it’s good enough fortune for a Friday night.
7.5/10
Add comment
Comments