WHAT’S IT ABOUT

A well-meaning but rather inept angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) meddles in the lives of a struggling gig worker (Aziz Ansari) and a wealthy venture capitalist (Seth Rogen).

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Aziz Ansari pretends he’s lived the grind. In his directorial effort “Good Fortune,” he steps into the role of Arj, a man who sleeps in his car and chases whatever odd job flashes on his phone just to scrape through another day in Los Angeles. The film tosses out questions about cash, fairness, and what truly matters.. The answers land shallow, as a kiddie pool wrapped in jokes that barely coax a grin. The premise, though, does have a hook. Arj makes his living delivering meals to Jeff, a super‑rich tech tycoon portrayed by Seth Rogen, who spends his time drifting in a pool and treating himself to lunches paid for by his company. Their existences could not be more disparate. While Arj barely scrapes by, Jeff hosts parties in his sprawling estate and jets off alone to far‑off destinations. Then Gabriel, an angel brought to life by Keanu Reeves, steps in, convinced that the duo needs hard‑earned life lessons. Gabriel manages to pull off an almost supernatural exchange; Arj finds himself in Jeff’s posh house, while Jeff is thrust into the grind of gig work, trying to struggle through it like everyone else. One would expect something interesting to happen once it got to this point. Instead, the story flattens out there. Supposedly, the story has a point about how money can’t buy happiness. Instead, it unwittingly proves the opposite. As Arj’s fortune balloons, his life genuinely brightens; he jets off on trips, throws parties, and overall seems to be having a blast. The movie lingers, waiting for a point where he finally feels empty or realizes he misses his life. That epiphany never materializes. Instead, Arj, with a shrug, decides he’d rather stay wealthy, thank you very much. Can you blame him? The sole character who appears to evolve at all is Gabriel himself. After a screw‑up, his angelic superior, Martha, played by Sandra Oh in a role that feels criminally small, dismisses him. Gabriel is stripped of his wings. Forced to live as a human. Seeing Reeves relish pleasures in milkshakes, tacos, and a greasy burger turns out to be the only genuine delight the film offers. His childlike amazement when he bites into a chicken nugget feels both sweet and funny, something the rest of the picture never quite captures. Reeves nails confusion better than most, propping up scenes that would otherwise fall flat. And when Gabriel gets high for the time or suddenly realizes people find him attractive, Reeves makes those moments land, all thanks to charisma. Unfortunately, even a breezy, endearing performance can’t rescue a film that wanders without a point. Apparently, Ansari spent days tailing delivery drivers to get into the role, a decision that in hindsight feels oddly patronizing. He grew up in a family of doctors with a cushioned upbringing. Had to plunge into research just to glimpse what it’s like when one can’t settle a bill. That disconnect seeps through the entire film. Observations about poverty and inequity seem a collection of detached documentary summaries rather than a lived-in understanding of poverty and inequity that comes before scrutinizing them. The script has intrinsic tension that wants to jump into the spirit of a cult classic like “I Heart Huckabees” and “Amelie” kind of whimsy. Good Fortune never gets the weight or the razor-sharp focus those movies wield. Those films knew what they wanted to say and hammered their themes home with force. The film drifts without a direction, occasionally brushing against subjects like homelessness, the gig economy, and the notion that the American Dream has essentially died for the majority, yet it never truly commits to probing any of these matters in depth. Keke Palmer appears as Elena, a hardware‑store employee who attempts to spearhead a union drive at her big‑box retailer. She’s inexplicably slotted in as Arj’s love interest, a choice that makes sense. Palmer radiates a magnetic screen presence and effortless charm. The movie squanders her talent entirely. One is expected to buy into the notion that a clever attuned woman, with her life neatly arranged, would end up falling for Arj, whose chief personality trait seems to be a stream of complaints. His flirtations consist of drawn‑out, cringe‑worthy lumber and plumbing jokes that land with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The romance drags itself along a path that feels manufactured. Palmer deserves more than being consigned to the periphery of another protagonist’s narrative. Seth Rogen delivers a performance painting Jeff as bewildered, then outright vicious, yet the role never transcends the bounds of a mere archetype. He’s the type who never grasps why poverty sticks around. When Jeff is thrust into Arj’s world, he surprisingly gets the hang of it immediately, maintaining a buoyant outlook the whole way through. The film squanders chances to depict fallout or to raise any meaningful stakes. No one gets wounded, and there’s never any genuine danger; never. Everyone walks away essentially unscathed. The whole production feels cheap and half‑hearted. Nothing about “Good Fortune” looks, or even feels, like a movie. The direction drifts into a sitcom‑like rhythm with the camera hovering over people talking and offering no visual spark. Los Angeles pops up throughout. It never assumes the role of a character or contributes anything to the narrative, just a generic backdrop that could have been any city. Ansari’s intention is clear: to create a comedy that addresses wealth inequality and pushes the audience to think about fairness and justice. At the end of the film, the film rests in speeches about compensating workers and safeguarding jobs from intelligence, good ideas that end up being just that, as they are only superficially entertained without truly unpacking them. The film seems eager to earn points for caring about topics. It never does the legwork of actually putting forward a clear, provocative stance. The timing only makes things worse. Ansari recently performed at a comedy festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a nation with a human‑rights record. Then he releases a movie that bills itself as a meditation on ethics and doing the thing. That glaring contradiction hangs over the project, like an odor. You can’t turn a blind eye to it despite the fact that the film bears no connection to Saudi Arabia. Watching “Good Fortune” comes across like enduring a Saturday Night Live bit that’s been forced to drag on for an hour and forty minutes. The concept flashes with a hint of promise. There’s simply not enough meat to sustain the entire runtime. Bits that might have landed in a five‑minute television slot get. Stretched until they utterly lose their humor. What the film really needed was a sense of humor, deeper insight, or characters you could actually connect with. Instead, it delivers none of those things. Ansari acts as if his own charm and likability are enough to carry a movie on personality. They aren’t. His performance feels rigid and overly conscious of the camera. He tries hard to be relatable, but he ends up feeling anything but. His duck‑like timbre and those oversized eyes, which were quirks in TV spots, quickly turn into an irritating presence when they carry an entire film. “Good Fortune” isn’t a disaster, by any stretch. It won’t leave you fuming or feeling like you threw away money, provided you stream it instead of paying full‑price theater tickets. Still, it drifts into forgetfulness, the sort of movie that slips from memory the instant the credits roll. When a film aims to grapple with themes like inequality and the search for meaning, ending up this toothless feels like a genuine failure.

OUR RATING – A STUMBLING 3

MEDIA

• Genre – Comedy

Street date

• Digital – November 7, 2025
• 4K/BluRay/DVD – December 9, 2025
• Video – 1080p
• Screen size 1.85:1
• Sound – English: Dolby Atmos, Descriptive Audio, Spanish/French 5.1 Dolby Digital
• Subtitles – English, English SDH, Spanish, French

Extras

• Audio Commentary – With writer/director Aziz Ansari, and producer Alan Yang
• The Fantasy of Reality (HD 14:37) – The making of Good Fortune
• The Los Angeles of Good Fortune (HD 12:24)
• The Clothes Make the Man… and the Angel (HD 6:15)
• Trailer