Good Fortune is the directorial debut from actor and comedian, Aziz Ansari. While I am not familiar with Aziz Ansari’s work prior to this movie, I am familiar with Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogan who both act in this. Not only did the cast and trailers have me interested to see what this movie was, but the fact that this is a comedy movie releasing in a time when comedy as a genre of film, is basically dead. While this year has me hopeful of a comedy comeback with The Naked Gun being really funny and now with the release of Good Fortune, I went into this movie with high expectations and high hopes that this movie would be funny enough for a big comedy comeback in cinema.
Moving away from all that though, Good Fortune is about a man named Arj (Aziz Ansari) who is down on his luck in the world and has an angel come in and swap his life with someone who is rich to show him that having money doesn’t fix all of his problems… until it fixes all of his problems and now the angel has to get both Arj and Jeff (the rich guy or Seth Rogan) to swap back their lives. The concept was interesting and made up for some funny moments within the movie. Keanu as an angel oddly seems perfect and the idea sounds funny enough, so what could possibly go wrong? Not much.
Starting with the positives, each member of the cast has at least one or two lines that are funny, Keanu as Gabreial the angel made the movie for me as he tries to be someone who doesn’t understand life, and it leads to many funny moments. The humor in here tends to be repetitive, but in a new context each time, keeping it fresh even if you’ve heard it before in the movie. One of the moments that had my theater laughing the hardest was when Gaberial gets his first check and he finds out how social security and taxes work. I also appreciate how they show what a person of less money would do if they were rich and how they show what they go through with a rich person going through the struggle, and I like how they show the bad side of it with the character of Gabreial.
With the mixed, this movie does have a bit of preachiness to the movie, but I was really bothered by it as it did lead to laughs. The other thing is how they say that things will get better if you keep trying, which I agree with to an extent due to some people just never getting back on their feet when they are in that situation. Other than those two small things though, I don’t really have any complaints.
Overall, this is a feel-good comedy movie that will have a laugh for almost everyone. I’m giving this movie a 4/5 because I laughed throughout and would recommend seeing it in theaters for a comedy comeback.
