{"id":13273,"date":"2025-10-18T18:53:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T22:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13273"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:58:10","slug":"good-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/10\/18\/good-fortune\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Fortune"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Good Fortune<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Aziz Ansari\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Aziz Ansari\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Carter Burwell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Adam Newport-Berra\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 17, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Keanu Reeves, Sherry Cola, Stephen McKinley Henderson.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tell me if you\u2019ve heard this one. An angel comes down to earth to help a lost soul. He shows him how his life would be under other circumstances. Lost soul learns to love life and to appreciate what he has. He then goes back to his old life with newfound purpose. Does it sound at all familiar? That\u2019s a rhetorical question. Some of us watch it every Christmas. I don\u2019t. I can\u2019t stand that movie and it looks like I\u2019m not alone in my dislike.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Actor-comedian Aziz Ansari, writing and directing his first feature film, takes Good Fortune<\/strong> in a different direction. It starts with lost soul Arj (Ansari) despairing of his life. The guy can\u2019t catch a break. A wannabe documentary filmmaker, he barely makes ends meet by doing odd jobs for people via some phone app and working part time at a big hardware store. He lives in his car and showers at a local gym. He then meets super-wealthy tech investor Jeff (Rogen, The Studio) and convinces him to hire him as his assistant. The gig doesn\u2019t last long. Jeff fires him and it\u2019s back to square one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All seems lost when Arj\u2019s car is towed from a Denny\u2019s parking lot. Now he really is homeless. That\u2019s when the angel Gabriel (Reeves, John Wick) appears to him. Gabriel is a lower-level angel meaning it\u2019s not his job to guide souls. His job is to stop people from texting and driving. He wants to do more and sees an opportunity to prove his true worth to his supervisor Martha (Oh, Killing Eve). He arranges for Arj and Jeff to trade places for a few days in order for Arj to learn that success and wealth won\u2019t solve his problems. But it does. And guess what? When it\u2019s time to switch back, Arj refuses. He wants to keep living Jeff\u2019s life. Oops.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a result, Gabriel loses his wings and is forced to live as a human. If he can convince Arj to change back, maybe he\u2019ll get his wings back. So it is that Gabriel takes up with Jeff, now living Arj\u2019s life and not loving it. Meanwhile, Arj is having a blast living the high life. He becomes romantically involved with Elena (Palmer, One of Them Days), a former colleague at the hardware store trying to convince her co-workers to unionize. She doesn\u2019t remember the old Arj and comes to not like the new Arj.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Keanu really makes Good Fortune<\/strong>. It\u2019s his movie and everybody knows it. He brings his laid-back SoCal attitude to Gabriel, saying yes to everything Ansari\u2019s screenplay throws at him. It\u2019s delightful to watch Gabriel experience things he never has before like eating (especially tacos), salsa dancing and smoking cigarettes. Even at his lowest, washing dishes at some greasy little eatery, he brings good vibes. It\u2019s a joy watching Keanu do Keanu.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The rest of the cast does a fine job too. Ansari nails it as the guy who learns that money really can buy happiness (if not love). It\u2019s not the intended lesson, but it\u2019s the one that works best for him. It\u2019s fun to watch the measures he\u2019ll resort to in order to keep his new life, one that isn\u2019t rightfully his. Rogen is also good as the tech bro who can\u2019t conceive of a life without any of the amenities. He\u2019s at a loss when he finds himself on the streets trying to eke out a living in an uncaring society. And with an ex-angel no less. Palmer, all street smarts and sass, is always fun. Her socially conscious Elena is a perfect match for both versions of Arj, the nice passive one and the other guy. Oh, whose role isn\u2019t huge, brings it as the head angel, a boss the likes of which many of us have known.<\/p>\n

\u00a0These days, too many comedies aim low, choosing to be unnecessarily gross, vulgar and mean-spirited. Ironically, a few have featured Rogen in the cast. He makes up for it by being part of Good Fortune<\/strong>, a surprisingly kind-hearted comedy that doesn\u2019t reek of desperation. Some comedies feel like they\u2019re forcing you to laugh, that there\u2019s something wrong with you if you don\u2019t find it funny. Good Fortune<\/strong> is effortless in getting viewers to laugh. It\u2019s not riotously funny. It\u2019s gentler in its humor and even a little bit insightful in its examination of gig economics and the dehumanization of the work force. One of Jeff\u2019s companies is the outfit that\u2019s replacing food delivery people with robots thus robbing already struggling people of income. It\u2019s doesn\u2019t go as deep as one would like, but at least it doesn\u2019t pretend the situation doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I really like Good Fortune<\/strong>. It\u2019s a good-natured piece. It\u2019s also a bit twisted, but not in a way that will alienate mainstream audiences. Ansari takes the whole divine intervention thing and turns it on his head. The notion of an angel failing in a mission that was never his to begin with is a fun idea. I like that Ansari never tries to go big with any of it. It\u2019s just a cute, slightly warped little movie. It\u2019s easy on the senses. You can\u2019t ask for much more than that.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good Fortune (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Aziz Ansari\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Aziz Ansari\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Carter Burwell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Adam Newport-Berra\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 17, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Keanu Reeves, Sherry Cola, Stephen McKinley Henderson. Rating: *** \u00a0Tell me if you\u2019ve heard this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Good-Fortune-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13276,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13273\/revisions\/13276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}