Good Fortune movie review: Keanu Reeves plays an angel who bestows economic justice

It’s easy to lose faith in Billy Wilder or Frank Capra when a brave soul tries to make a comedy that takes America’s temperature through sarcasm and optimism. These Hollywood masters can effortlessly juggle the sweet, the sour, the sarcastic, and in Wilder’s case, even leave you believing in a happy ending.

With his feature-length directorial debut, Good Fortune, Aziz Ansari, who stars alongside Seth Rogen and Keanu Reeves (as an angel named Gabriel), swings it big, hoping to capture that funny vibe of telling the truth about the state of things. And his subject matter is fertile, too: the gig economy that reinforces our crushing inequality, but also the desperation of the have-nots and how oblivious the rich are to those who make them rich. So let’s stick to the billionaires! Let Keanu help the oppressed!

Ansari’s high-low moral tale, set in a fair (and unjust) Los Angeles, is an amiable mix of heavenly-tinged stories (“Heaven Can Wait,” “Wings of Desire”) and body-swapping comedy (“Trading Places”). But although she is agreeable, she cannot reconcile her affection with her affection. He has a heart, kind eyes, a sarcastic smile and some funny lines, but no teeth when you really need to bite, chew and spit things out.

Ansari plays Arj, who experiences a dangerous disconnect between his professional identity — a wannabe Hollywood film editor — and how he actually exists: running errands for scraps of paper and living in his car. When a garage reorganizing job for Jeff (Rogen), a Bel-Air venture capitalist, turns into an assistant position, Arj feels secure enough to use his company card to have a fancy dinner with occasional colleague and romantic interest Elena (an underutilized Keke Palmer). Jeff records the charges the next day (realistic details about rich people watching every penny), and fires Arj on the spot.

All the while, Arg’s sad attitude takes its toll on Reeves’ long-haired, khaki-suit-clad angel, whose life-saving mission (he specializes in hustling distracted drivers) is low in the hierarchy overseen by chief guardian Martha (Sandra Oh). Gabriel wants a big therapy job to show Arj, with a little role-reversal magic, that being Jeff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Except of course. (David Mamet’s line “Everyone needs money — that’s why they call it money” comes to mind.) The newly affluent and likable Arg shows no signs of wanting to go back (which seems to be his call to action in the rules of this scenario), leaving a brooding Gabriel in the position of convincing the sudden billionaire why he should go back to being poor.

And this is where Good Fortune, despite its understanding of how Great Depression-era screwball comedy makes the filthy rich the subject of ridicule, struggles to match its issue-driven humor with its unflinching heart. While it’s funny to watch Rogen’s newly desperate character suffer the humiliation of a food delivery, it’s another matter to buy into the changes at the heart of the script — and the film’s naïve notion of where everyone should end up being. That’s why screwball comedies don’t try to turn capitalism on its head, they just have some clever fun and let a simple love story work. Al-Ansari’s ambition is admirable, but he is better at diagnosis than solutions.

His golden-eyed movement gives the deadpan, funny Reeves one of his best roles in years: a goofy meme brought to the disarming life and beating heart of the film. Doing good can be hard work; Humans are more difficult to understand. Plus, Reeves makes eating a burger for the first time a very funny affirmation that life is great sometimes.