Aziz Ansari has had a strange few years. Known throughout the early-2010s as a Parks and Recreation cast member, a fairly successful stand-up comedian, and occasional movie actor, Ansari created and starred in the Netflix show Master of None, which was highly acclaimed and placed such a premium on filmmaking and aesthetics that critics frequently commented that Ansari could have a future as a movie director.
Then came one of the weirder stories of the #MeToo era, when a woman accused Ansari of vague sexual misconduct, as reported on a short-lived Jezebel knockoff website called Babe.net. This derailed Ansari’s career; Master of None aired a bizarre third season in which his character was barely involved. Then, Ansari was to make his directorial debut with a film called Being Mortal, but more accusations, this time against star Bill Murray, led to the project being scuttled after filming had begun.
Ansari is finally making his feature directorial debut with a comedy/drama called Good Fortune, which he also wrote. It’s a disjointed, oddly laugh-free effort that steals most of its ideas from either Trading Places or Wings of Desire. A charming performance by Keanu Reeves can’t save this effort, thanks to a subpar script that frequently resets itself and can’t keep straight the rules of what angels can and can’t do, as well as Ansari not able to hold down a leading role in a movie.
Ansari stars as Arj, a young man struggling with a series of gig economy jobs and living in his car while trying to romance a hardware store employee (Keke Palmer). One day, he stumbles into an assistant job with a rich venture capitalist (Seth Rogen), who spends more on a watch than Arj will likely make in his life.
The other major character is Gabriel (Reeves), an angel whose job is to prevent humans from looking at their phones while driving. Seeking to rise in the angel world, Gabriel decides to intervene in Arj and Jeff’s lives, with disastrous results.
By the time the plot exhausts itself, the rich man and poor man will have swapped circumstances, the angel will have gotten a taste of what it means to be human, and everyone will have learned some valuable lessons—and resolved to overthrow modern capitalism.
Reeves fun with the role, as a fallen angel who finds he loves dancing and Mexican food, although again, most of the ideas in this plot were done better in the Wenders film—and in City of Angels, the Nicolas Cage/Meg Ryan Wings of Desire remake that, like Good Fortune, was set in Los Angeles.
Good Fortune might’ve amounted to more if the script had been tighter. But the premise reshuffles every 15 minutes. It’s also strangely sexless—Reeves’ fall to humanity, for some reason, never entails any romantic desire (women, though, can’t stop falling all over him). And Palmer, so memorable in films like Nope and Just One of Them Days, is given almost nothing to play at all.
The film has a socialist agenda. If a character’s not running a union drive, the heroes are giving earnest speeches about the need for redistribution of wealth. The modern gig economy and the venture capitalists that back it could use a skewering-—although in this film’s universe, VCs don’t seem to be required to go to the office or do any work at all. But Good Fortune gets to the point where the politics start to overwhelm the story. And the earnest progressive politics are undercut by the director agreeing to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.