Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogen lead pleasant if pappy film Good Fortune

Actor/writer/director Aziz Ansari is best known for his role on the sitcom Parks & Recreation and for creating and starring in the Emmy-winning Master of None on Netflix. While he had directed multiple episodes of Master of None, he had not been given a chance to test out his filmmaking skills on the big screen until now with the comedy Good Fortune.

The film is centered on Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a guardian angel who’s assigned the task of helping people avoid accidents while texting and driving. This gig puts him in the orbit of Arj (Ansari), whose mostly aimless life has him working at a hardware store and doing odd jobs through an app called Task. Gabriel, hoping to become a more senior angel, sees Arj as a “lost soul” who he might be able to rescue.

When Arj delivers food to tech entrepreneur Jeff (Seth Rogen), Gabriel sees an opportunity to get through to Arj. The idea is to have Arj switch lives with Jeff to understand that money is not the solution to all problems. But things backfire when Arj becomes comfortable in his new opulent lifestyle, and Gabriel has to scramble to undo what was supposed to be a temporary detour.

Written and directed by Ansari, the film is a pleasant but unfulfilling twist on the body swap genre. The idea that the switch is being controlled by a desperate guardian angel who’s only hoping to move up in the world is objectively funny. The more Arj enjoys the rich life, the worse things become for Gabriel (and, by extension, Jeff). This results in some funny scenes between Gabriel and his boss, Martha (Sandra Oh), as well as some fun discoveries Gabriel makes about life as a human.

However, each of the three main characters are so broad that it’s difficult to care about anything that happens to any of them. Ansari never goes beyond surface level on any larger issues the film confronts, like the gig economy and wealth disparity, and so most of the jokes in the story are equally superficial. He’s clearly aiming for Gabriel, Arj, and Jeff to learn lessons by the end of the film, but the message becomes muddled along the way.

A big part of the issue is that neither Ansari nor Reeves are very good in their line deliveries. The stilted way in which they speak doesn’t lend any believability to their characters’ motivations, thereby diminishing the audience’s desire to see them succeed. Even worse, Ansari cast the dynamo Keke Palmer as a love interest for Arj, and then saddles her with a role that makes her about as boring as possible.

Rogen, who’s on a TV hot streak with the Apple TV shows The Studio and Platonic, is one of the lone bright spots in the film, but even he is given a role that doesn’t play entirely to his strengths. Oh is great in her very brief time on screen, and the film could have used more of her. A cameo by Matt Rogers also makes you wish he could have had a bigger part.

Ansari, trying to make a comeback after a #MeToo controversy in 2018, has made a film that remains watchable throughout even as you wish he had executed the details better. He also seems to match Reeves’ odd acting style, something that serves neither their characters nor the overall film well.

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Good Fortune opens in theaters on October 17.