Is fame and fortune all it’s cracked up to be? For a struggling gig worker, Arj (Aziz Ansari), the answer may genuinely be yes. In Good Fortune, a “budget guardian angel” (Keanu Reeves) who usually toils in the texting and driving division tries to help Arj with his envy—specifically over the lifestyle of a wealthy venture capitalist he delivers to named Jeff (Seth Rogen).
Whoever was training the angels in It’s A Wonderful Lifemay want to step out of retirement to help this new crop of recruits; they seem to be missing a few of the fundamentals. Instead of showing Arj how much his loved ones would suffer without him, he magics up a Prince And The Pauper-esque situation where Arj and Jeff switch places in an attempt to show the former that there’s more to life than money and partying. At least in the trailer, this plan doesn’t work even a little bit. “I tried to show him that wealth wouldn’t solve all his problems,” Reeves’ angel, Gabriel, says to a fellow angel played by Sandra Oh. “It seems to have solved most of his problems.”
Things seem to further devolve from there, as Jeff later meets Gabriel while he’s smoking a cigarette and looking like an extra from The Bear outside of a crappy restaurant. “Leave me alone, Jeff. I like it. It’s all I have,” he tells his newly destitute companion. Maybe Gabriel needs a guardian angel of his own.
Good Fortune was written and directed by Ansari, who didn’t have the greatestluck trying to get this film out the door. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes delayed production for nearly a year, until it eventually picked back up in January 2024. After a long road, it will finally premiere at TIFF in September before rolling out to theaters worldwide October 17. Maybe you’ll have the good fortune to snag a ticket.
