For his characteristic directing debut, Aziz Ansari merges two acquainted comedy units: the physique swap and the guardian angel intervention. In Ansari’s “Good Fortune,” an entry-level angel (Keanu Reeves) involves the help of a down-on-his-luck gig employee, Arj (Ansari), which entails Arj swapping lives with Jeff (Seth Rogen), a rich enterprise capitalist.
The jokes land: we witness Arj, an out-of-work documentary editor who needs to make his personal movies, hustle for TaskRabbit-type jobs. He botches a cinnamon bun store errand and, in a hilarious early scene, crushes a toddler’s dream of changing into an archaeologist with a fatalistic speech about maturity. Ansari, Rogen, and Reeves make for a pleasant trio of heavy-hitters. Reeves’ Gabriel nails quips like, “I used to be a celestial being and now I’m a series smoker hooked on nicotine.”
And the ensemble forged is pitch excellent: Sandra Oh shines because the lead angel, and although Stephen McKinley Henderson, as probably the most inspiring angel Azreal, solely seems in a single scene, collectively they offer the angel-intervention idea heft. The script is trimmed and polished. At a post-screening Q&A following the movie‘s premiere on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, Ansari and Reeves described engaged on the jokes at Ansari’s residence by stay readings and improvisation. Daniel Haworth’s edit is tight and warranted — you’d by no means know manufacturing halted and restarted due to the writers’ strike. The Bel Air home, the pool, even the encampments of Los Angeles — all gleam.
However that high-gloss sheen works towards the story, smoothing out the tough edges of gig work that make Arj’s actuality much less of a bummer.
The query is: much less of a bummer for whom? Leaving the screening I requested myself: who’re these jokes actually for? They aren’t for the Arjs or the Elenas (Keke Palmer as a would-be union organizer and Arj’s love curiosity) of the world. They’re for the Jeffs — the individuals who can’t think about ever changing into an Arj or an Elena.
The gig work humor and tech-bro satire seem to punch up at unfettered capitalism however really punch down on the hundreds of thousands of employees whose issues gained’t be solved by the top of the 98 minute operating time. Ansari thinks it’s attainable to make the behemoth problems with financial inequality and the housing disaster humorous, citing inspirations like “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941) and “My Man Godfrey” (1936), each movies about rich protagonists “slumming it” with the much less lucky. He thinks it’s attainable as a result of he’s a Jeff.
There are nods to the facility of group — Jeff and Gabriel uncover it’s simpler to outlive the gig employee life collectively. And when Arj lastly confesses to his father (performed by Ansari’s real-life dad, Dr. Shoukath Ansari) that his “new condo” is a lie, he receives the kindness he’s been eager for. However general, “Good Fortune” is much less about satirizing energy than commodifying actual struggles. I suppose you don’t know what you don’t know.
In full disclosure, I’m not a Jeff. Like Arj, I slept in my automotive in LA, parked in tons, and anxious about safety kicking me out. I’ve been a gig employee — Uber, Lyft, Instacart. I do know an excessive amount of to snigger uproariously just like the Jeffs who crammed the viewers on the premiere. They laughed like folks for whom this was all theoretical, one other night time of escapist leisure. As Elena says to Arj-turned-Jeff in an earlier scene that cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra lights with moody inexperienced: “You’re in this home, telling me not to surrender.”
Finally, we’re left and not using a significant arc after the our bodies change again. Does Jeff’s speech to his Doordash-like board make a distinction? Does Arj have a spot to sleep that night time? Elevating systemic points after which resolving them with humor falls flat for this critic. Yeah, the system sucks — however that is barely an perception, and it rings hole to anybody who is just not a Jeff.
The characters that resonated most weren’t the leads, however the employees on the margins. Felipe (Felipe Garcia Martinez), the dishwasher who befriends Gabriel at his first job, is unforgettable: regardless of working three jobs, he nonetheless makes time to exit dancing along with his spouse on the cumbia joint. That pleasure felt trustworthy. So did the generosity of the Denny’s waiter who provides Arj a trip when he sees how laborious a time he’s having. I wished extra of that, extra of them.
So who is that this film actually for? For somebody who’s lived near the sting, the movie felt extra hole than empathetic. It spends most of its time displaying us how dangerous issues are for employees, then appears to say in its last scene that the answer is to make artwork about it. In the long run, “Good Fortune” left me skeptical and uneasy, questioning whether or not the folks it depicts with such lightheartedness will solely really feel objectified as a substitute.
Grade: C+
“Good Fortune” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. Lionsgate will launch the movie in theaters on Friday, October 17.
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