Keanu Reeves Is the Stealth MVP of ‘Good Fortune’

There has probably never been, and almost assuredly never will be, someone who’s watched Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders’ transcendent 1987 film about an angel who watches over lonely citydwellers and lost souls, yearning to give up the divine in order to be human, and said: “This movie really needed Keanu Reeves.” That’s not a knock against the man who has given us Theodore “Ted” Logan, Johnny Utah, Neo, and John Wick. It’s more like the actor and the movie are two great tastes that wouldn’t necessarily taste great together. Maybe you don’t need a big scoop of Rocky Road ice cream dolloped on top of that filet mignon?

Before we get into why we’re bringing up these two disparate elements, please bear with us as we do some housekeeping. Good Fortune is a class-conscious comedy that follows Arj, played by writer-director Aziz Ansari, as an Angeleno trying to make ends meet by picking up Task Rabbit-style odd jobs, working for various transport and food-delivery apps, and doing the occasional big-box retail stint. He lives out of his car, because even when he’s putting in 20-hour days, he can’t afford to pay rent. Arj cannot catch a break. The dude is the living embodiment of the gig-economy blues.

Oh, and it costars Seth Rogen — he’s Jeff, a venture capitalist tech bro who lives in the swankest of swank places in the Hollywood Hills. You’d recognize the type: owns a rare Porsche but never drives it because it’s got a stick shift, holds court about the benefits of cold plunges a lot, thinks nothing of dropping $250k on a dope watch to add to his already large dope-watch collection. He hires Arj to be his assistant on a whim, who’s actually great at the job. Then he fires Arj, due to a bad decision his relatively new employee makes in regards to a company credit card his boss has just given him. Did we mention Keke Palmer is also in this? So are the always great Sandra Oh and Stephen McKinley Henderson. Strong cast, right?

None of them matter. Or rather, they do matter, because they’re there to keep the plot moving along, and provide some of the funny, and obviously Ansari is making his bid for big-screen triple-threat here. But they’re not the main attraction. Watching over Arj is an angel named Gabriel, whose duty is to keep people who text and drive from getting in a wreck. The movie takes place in L.A., so given the frequency of that offense in the city of angels, he’s got his hands full. Yet this ambitious celestial feels like he’s the runt of the heavenly litter, given that so many other angels are helping people in more profound ways.
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That’s why when Arj hits rock bottom, Gabriel offers to let him switch places with Jeff for a week. This former assistant will now be the lord of the manor, the guy with millions in the bank account, the owner of the dope-watch collection. In this reality, Jeff handles all of the day-to-day details. The idea is that Arj will see how superficial and shallow the good life really is, and be far more thankful for his own meager existence. Except Arj does not think the good life is shallow at all. Money has, in fact, solved all of his problems. Why would he give this up? Plus Jeff soon regains his memory, and after realizing he’s now forced to be a working-class stiff barely keeping his head above water, he’s pissed. Gabriel has royally screwed the pooch.

The angel, as you’ve likely guessed by now, is played by Keanu Reeves. And it turns out we absolutely, positively, beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt did need a cracked version of Wings of Desire starring the bassist for Dogstar. Dear god, how we’ve needed this without even knowing it.

Good Fortune has its good-enough qualities apart from the Matrix star, especially give how light its comic touch is. If you can get past the feeling that you’re essentially being lectured by two IRL rich comedians about how tough it is out there for the common people, you’ll appreciate how everything plays like an extremely absurdist Master of None episode. But Reeves is so funny, so sublime, and so fucking spot-on in his portrayal of a do-gooder whose genius plan goes off-the-rails that he ends up slipping the movie into his Constantine-style overcoat pocket and walking away with it. He ends up doing some of the best work of his career here.
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So much of it is in Reeves’ reaction shots, which run the gamut from perfectly deadpan to subtly slow-burning frustration; he thinks he’s imparting hard-earned wisdom on this lost soul, only to be met with Ansari’s character countering a lot of big Tom Haverford energy. Once Gabriel is essentially fired from being an angel and must contend with being human, Reeves turns every brand new sensation, every fresh hell of disappointment into a minor comedic set pieces. Watch his face light up as he drinks milkshakes and eats tacos for the first time, or learns how to dance cumbia. Listen to him bum-rush a workers’ union meeting and begin describing, with over-enthusiastic earnestness, how dogs get a raw deal. Try not to crack up when, having forced to work a dishwasher job and see his wages sucked away by taxes and social security, he snaps when someone criticizes him for taking up smoking: “Leave me alone, I like it, it’s all I have!” Even a simple declaration like “I’m a dum-dum” is enough to inspire impromptu giggles.

There’s a whole other movie happening within Good Fortune‘s attempt to Aesop-fable its way to some moral about a modest life being a more fulfilling one, even if you’re forced to live in your car. And when Reeves gives you a glimpse of that story, in which someone truly learns that humanity is both painful and blissful in equal measures, and anchors it all with a truly divine turn, well — you feel fortunate that get to witness that.