TORONTO – Times are tough. Job losses keep increasing, as do the prices of medical care, food, and housing. The gig economy is partly booming because people need the work or the extra side hustle to make ends meet. There looks to be no relief in sight for what’s going wrong with the American Dream. This may seem like a sour premise for a comedy, but Aziz Ansari’s biting satire “Good Fortune” masterfully addresses the times we’re living in with a message and many jokes.
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Arj (Ansari) is one of many people juggling multiple jobs and still not making enough for a place to call his own. Living out of his car, he hustles between working odd delivery jobs, furniture building gigs, and shifts at a hardware store. He’s falling asleep at the local Denny’s and showering at the 24-hour gym. At one of his errand gigs, he meets a venture capitalist named Jeff (Seth Rogen) who hires him as an assistant. However, the arrangement is short-lived, and Arj is once again adrift. He hides his situation from his family out of shame, but is not alone. Arj’s struggles catch the attention of a low-ranking guardian angel, Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), who tries to show Arj that the rich life is not all that it’s cracked up to be by swapping Arj into Jeff’s life, and Jeff into Arj’s world. Of course, living la vida rica has its upsides, and Arj does not want to give up his good fortune at the end of the trial run — a decision that inadvertently costs Gabriel his own job. If Gabriel is to get his wings back, he’ll need Jeff and Arj to return to their respective lives, hopefully with a better appreciation for life despite its setbacks.
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Written and directed by Ansari, his feature debut “Good Fortune” feels like a comedy from another era, one that’s sensitive yet funny with a “ripped from the headlines” edge. Ansari’s story covers the abuse of gig workers, wealth inequality, and even issues like unionization, which is what Arj’s love interest Elena (Keke Palmer) is trying to do at their hardware store. The movie argues that we should both treat and pay gig workers better, a fight that extends far beyond our own borders. It is clear this is a subject Ansari has thought a lot about, and his sharp jokes consistently punch up at the privileged and the absurdity of the exploitative work practices we’ve come to normalize.
The film’s script goes into surprising detail about how Arj is surviving in these lean times, as well as the experience of strangers shortchanging him out of a tip or payment. At its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Ansari cited Depression-era social comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, like “My Man Godfrey” and Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels”, as inspiration. Both feature working-class characters with a thing or two to teach the rich about their lives. Despite the challenging issues, these movies are deeply funny precisely because they’re unafraid to tell a joke and remain relatable to what some in the audience might be going through themselves.
Ansari mixes in other references to these movies in various ways, including a subplot about amnesia borrowed from “Sullivan’s Travels.” With Gabriel, we get a version of Clarence the guardian angel from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Ansari’s angel is an innocent and well-meaning spirit who’s fascinated by the world and determined to keep his new friend Arj living in it despite his bleak outlook. Reeves sounds like his character from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and dresses like Bruno Ganz in “Wings of Desire,” delivering lines with a delightful sense of timing. When he loses his wings for overstepping his role in the angel hierarchy and body-swapping Arj and Jeff, Gabriel turns human, running into the same struggles Arj faces — hunger, sleeping in his car, and making it to the next paycheck. For Jeff, the body swap is an eye-opening experience of how the other half lives: sometimes he is harmed by the very companies from which he profits financially. Rogen plays Jeff not as a villain but as someone ignorant of people like Arj, undergoing the biggest transformation in the film. Ansari sends his clearest message through Rogen’s character: we should treat each other better, starting with the companies behind appalling low wages for gig workers, ridiculous productivity mandates like those at Amazon, and app setups that allow customers to exploit workers.
“Good Fortune” is a refreshing comedy that audiences haven’t seen in a while, a movie with a message that both advocates for a cause and entertains. The spirit of the film is to punch up at how wildly uneven this economy is and how normalized it has become to mistreat one’s less fortunate neighbors. Backed with a talented cast that includes Palmer and Sandra Oh, Ansari takes a fearless swing, and the results pay off with a sharp comedy that has more on its mind than just punchlines. [A-]
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