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good fortune A cinephile’s comedy, crafted with taste it’s a Wonderful Life (1946), trading place (1983), and wings of Desire (1987). It’s more enjoyable than it is funny. Its director, Aziz Ansari, offers us little of the honest, personal insight that allows nobody’s masterThe Netflix series he co-created with Alan Yang, for sitting so comfortably with its Criterion archive closet full of references (in the mood for Love, bicycle thief, manhattanand so on).
In good fortuneAnsari writes and stars as Arj, an LA-based editor who currently lives in his car, and is stuck in an endless cycle of freelance odd jobs for the app Task Sergeant. A customer’s demand to wait in line for hours to pick up an order at “There Will Be Buns” – One for fans of Paul Thomas AndersonThere.
Every aspect of their life is surrounded by money. He can’t sleep, but all meditation podcasts are subscription-based, so his rest is intermittently interrupted by the Lexapro-high scream of a promotional ad. When she finally gets a steady job as an assistant to millionaire investor Jeff (Seth Rogen), she is promptly fired after Jeff recommends a restaurant to take his crush Elena to.keke palmer) to go on a date – it turns out the steak costs £129, so Jeff panics and uses the company credit card.
However, hope is not completely lost. An angel (Keanu Reeves’s Gabriel) is watching over him. Technically, he’s the angel of “texting and driving,” tasked with gently patting people on the shoulder when they look up the Wikipedia page for “ketchup” 10 seconds before tossing them into a truck. But he dreams of guiding lost souls like the great Azrael (a fine actor, Stephen McKinley Henderson).
He will show Arj that money will not solve all his problems. The only lie is that, as Frank Capra argued to the contrary, money can’t fix every problem, but it certainly fixes most. It’s a smart pivot to see older, cinematic ups and downs juxtaposed against bleaker, more modern circumstances, and Ansari shows how people are so easily distracted by the pure tedium of day-to-day subsistence.
But the film also feels awkwardly suspended between these two extremes: Adam Newport-Bera’s cinematography offers some stunning compositions, yet Daniel Howarth’s editing feels a little like the looseness of sitcom television. Carter Burwell’s score is as effortless as it gets, yet Palmer is less able to show off his infectious charm than he is by presenting the film’s subjects (almost) directly to the camera. It’s a film about the impossibility of modern life, yet it ends on an improbably Hollywood note of happiness.
What emerges from that slight jumble of ideas is ultimately a perfectly composed performance from Reeves as a naïve celestial being who is slowly coming to Earth. He really has a way with those fake-serious, declarative readings of the lines, “See how superficial your life is now?” And, coming out of his mouth, the words “chicken nuggies” have the adorable, giggling energy of a baby deer taking its first steps, rather than the usual infantile millennial speech. After all, it’s all meant as a tribute to his own saint-like reputation in the public eye, a reference within a reference, yet it’s still the freshest, funniest thing ever. good fortune,
Director: Aziz Ansari. Starring: Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Keanu Reeves. Cert 15, 97 min.
‘Good Fortune’ is in theaters from October 17