Sometimes, when life gets too hard, you need to laugh so that you don’t cry. And Good Fortune, is giving audiences the reason to laugh at it while not pulling back the punches on making a statement on the current economic status of the country.
Keanu Reeves gets in touch with his angelic side in Good Fortune. Unlike playing Constantine in the past, this time he’s playing Gabriel, a low ranking angel who strives for more. Tasked with preventing car crashes for drivers who are texting while driving, he finds one that one of the humans he’s been tasked to protect Ari (Aziz Ansari) is struggling with how his life is going, Gabriel sees his opportunity to show him that life isn’t always sweeter on the other side. He has Ari switch lives with his previous employer Jeff (Seth Rogan) for a week to show that money can’t fix his problems. But, what Gabriel doesn’t expect – money is what fixes the majority of them. And when Ari refuses to switch to his original life and Jeff is brought into the situation, the whole situation costs Gabriel his job, and his celestial status. Tossing him into the deep end of low paying jobs, learning how to be human and homelessness.
Between the hard life lessons we get a whole lot of Gabriel learning to be a human, and enjoying milk shakes, nuggies, tacos and becoming addicted to cigarettes. There are laughs, ridiculous situations and things that take the sting off a lot of moments that may feel too close to reality for anyone who has worked in customer service or has struggled to make it paycheck to paycheck.
Good Fortune on its surface isn’t a very deep concept, we’ve seen it before. An angel guiding a lost soul to their ultimate destiny. But below the layers of humor and very surface level religion, we also have a lot of social commentary. It’s a modern day It’s a Wonderful Life with a bizarre interspection of the gig economy, the current state of finances for a lot of working Americans. It says a lot about class inequality, the corrupt way corporations run off the back of their employees while keeping them poor – all with a side of nuggies and tacos.
For a movie that makes you laugh throughout it for being just outright ridiculous at times, it has a lot in it to make you think. Good Fortunes is in theaters everywhere this weekend.
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About Good Fortune
In GOOD FORTUNE, 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).