GOOD FORTUNE movie review | ©2025 Lionsgate

Rating: R
Stars: Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keanu Reeves, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Stephen McKinley Henderson
Writer: Aziz Ansari
Director: Aziz Ansari
Distributor: Lionsgate
Release Date: October 17, 2025

In GOOD FORTUNE, writer/director Aziz Ansari takes the basic premise of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and swirls it together with TRADING PLACES. Ansari adds enough twists so that GOOD FORTUNE isn’t a carbon copy of either, while using Keanu Reeves’s comedic style to maximum effect.

Reeves plays Gabriel, an angel with oddly short, fluffy wings. His job is to protect people from the consequences of texting while driving. As an unseen, unheard backseat passenger, Gabriel taps motorists on the shoulder just in time for them to see that they’re about to collide with something (or someone) and hit the brakes.

Given that he’s stationed in Los Angeles, Gabriel has his hands full. He in fact performs his assigned task very well, but when we see him with his fellow angels, most of whom have big proportionate wings, we understand why Gabriel feels that he could be doing more. Gabriel especially admires the angel Azrael (a spot-on Stephen McKinley Henderson), who – cue the IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE comparison – is in charge of finding despondent folks and showing them that their lives are still worth living.

Although angel boss Martha (Sandra Oh) tells Gabriel he’s not nearly ready to do that, he doesn’t heed her warning. Instead, Gabriel zeroes in on arguably lost soul Arj (filmmaker Anzari), whose life as a gig worker is pretty awful. Arj was a documentary film editor, but he can’t find any openings in his field. The employment he can get is demeaning, frustrating, boring, underappreciated and sometimes flat-out abusive.

After Arj is fired as assistant to tech bro billionaire Jeff (Seth Rogen) for something that’s really Jeff’s fault, Gabriel finds the poor guy in a Denny’s parking lot. Concluding that Arj is a lost soul, Gabriel decides to earn his full wings by helping this man appreciate his existence.

But Gabriel doesn’t know as much about human nature as he should and hasn’t fully considered the rules regarding what he’s doing. The upshot puts Arj in Jeff’s mansion, while Jeff and Gabriel try to survive together on the streets.

Ansari’s points about the absolute grinding insanity of trying to just afford housing, medical care and groceries for ordinary people are wholly on target and often very funny.

The tech bro jokes, on the other hand, tend to be a bit thinner, as does our patience with the characters indulging in the careless lifestyle depicted for them. There’s a sameness to selfishness and thoughtless cruelty that loses its variety before it stops getting running time.

However, Ansari sensibly relies on both Reeves’s gift for straight-faced humor and the goodwill the actor brings with him. Just when we’re getting exasperated with one more gag about the obliviousness of the rich, Gabriel will blessedly say something to bring back our sense of fun.

Keke Palmer is allowed to be more than just Arj’s love interest as Elena, who is trying to form a workers’ union in her Home Depot-type supply store. Her character embodies what Gabriel wants Arj to be – someone who can generally enjoy life even when circumstances are horrible – and Palmer imbues her with sincerity and wit.

With the caveat that Ansari personally showed up at the press screening attended by this reviewer and exhorted everyone there to tell people to see it in a theatre, GOOD FORTUNE really does benefit from experiencing it with an audience. The movie is about community, among other things, and sharing laughter and even cheers demonstrates that the movie often works very well.

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