Keanu Reeves Lifts Aziz Ansari’s Gentle Comedy Good Fortune

That’s crucial to a misreading from Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a low-level angel who encounters Arj during his routine divine intervention, concentrated in the field of texting and driving. It’s not a glamorous form of life-saving, but Gabriel hovers over Los Angeles, where it is certainly necessary. Gabriel sees in Arj a “lost soul,” murmuring to himself in concern when he sees his subject place his head in his hands in despair. Despair and desperation aren’t wholly absent from Arj’s mind, but mostly he’s just poor. Gabriel persists, going above his own spiritual pay grade to arrange a classically magical bit of lesson-learning. He switches Arj’s station in life with Jeff (Seth Rogen), a tech millionaire who has recently, briefly employed Arj as an assistant. The two guys get along well enough, but when Arj uses a company credit card for a fancy first date with his former co-worker Elena (Keke Palmer), Jeff is “forced” to let him go, even though the expensive restaurant was his idea, he can spare the money, and Arj immediately confesses and promises to pay him back. This might be an opportunity for Jeff to learn a lesson; that Gabriel instead focuses on Arj may be a sly joke on who we target for soul-clarifying improvement, in fiction and in life.

So Gabriel makes the switch, and is dismayed to find out that this gambit designed to show Arj that being rich wouldn’t make him happier mostly convinces him of the opposite: Being rich is absolutely easier than being poor. Jeff, meanwhile, must jump into the gig economy, and the pair can’t switch back until Arj truly believes that his real life is worth living as-is. (Jeff is aghast to learn that Arj’s enthusiasm factors in: “He has to be psyched about it?!” he says incredulously.) These complications also get Gabriel in trouble at work; he’s demoted from his station until the situation resolves itself.

Ansari, who also wrote and directed Good Fortune, floats in and out of his own movie, as we follow newly rich Arj, newly disadvantaged Jeff, and newly earthbound Gabriel. This could be taken as uncertainty over what story Ansari is telling, but Good Fortune’s low-key, gently drifting approach is one of its great advantages as a comedy that’s more clever and amusing than laugh-out-loud riotous. All three actors do get laughs – none more consistently or satisfyingly than Reeves. Gabriel’s years of observing humans in their cars have not prepared him for the basics of hunger, money, perspiration, and other human problems, and Reeves uses his beatific aura for an oddly affecting portrait of divine ineptitude, and the curiosity it engenders. In one scene, Jeff walks him through the process of eating a burger, and Reeves fulfills the odd requirement of convincingly pretending he’s never chewed before.

Rogen’s presence isn’t as magical, but he’s become adept at playing the idle rich, keying into the ways that privilege leads them into a moneyed form of pleasure-seeking not so dissimilar from the kinds of slacker characters he got famous playing. If Ansari doesn’t have as much range as an actor, his writing generously interlocks characters’ dilemmas as he explores how to be happy under less than extraordinary circumstances. Sometimes they explore these things a little too explicitly, and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, who recently did such inventive comic work on Splitsville, feels constrained by Ansari’s grace-deficient directness behind the camera, complementing his say-it-out-loud writing style. Both of these were more of a hinderance to the “cinematic” aspirations of his TV series Master of None; here, Rogen, Palmer, and especially Reeves lift the material without breaking a sweat.

What Good Fortune doesn’t quite provide is a place for them to set it down. Understandably avoiding a strict prescription for how to muddle through stratified classes and capitalist wreckage – one that would lead especially hollow given Ansari’s real-life fortune – the movie goes a bit mealymouthed in the final stretch, giving characters obligatory good deeds with what can’t help but feel like a helpless shrug. It’s telling that Reeves’ exit from the picture is unceremonious; it’s as if Ansari sensed he didn’t have anything worthy of the performance. For much of its runtime, Good Fortune sustains a kind of witty, neo-Capra sensibility. When it comes time to bring that sensibility up to date, Ansari politely skips out.

Director: Aziz Ansari
Writer: Aziz Ansari
Starring: Aziz Ansari, Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer
Release Date: Oct. 17, 2025

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.