Author: Tyler Hummel

One of the reasons why great films like Groundhog Day and It’s A Wonderful Life work is because of their deep sense of moralism. Both films confront frustrated characters with nightmare scenarios that literalise their deepest abiding fears and force them to recontextualise their lives to escape. In the end, though, the protagonists of both films escape and transcend their circumstances by becoming better people, realising the world exists outside of their desires, and becoming the best versions of themselves. Their mindset changes while their external circumstances remain the same.

This is an idea that recent screenwriters have worked hard to invert and satirise. 2020’s Palm Springs starts as a Groundhog Day pastiche of two characters trapped in an eternal cycle of torment, but quickly gives way to the realisation that being good people won’t fix the situation. Their stuck in the endless repetition is the nihilistic eventuality they must surrender to, with only the consolation of love providing relief from boredom and meaninglessness. 

The newest film to play with this idea is Good Fortune. Written, directed, and starring comedian Aziz Ansari in his directorial debut, the film starts with the same sort of moralistic pastiche and quickly warps into something funny but more cynical; a biting satire against the gig economy, Tech-Bro decadence, and the exploitation of the working class. 

What sets it apart, though, is it’s a nominal theological angle with the inclusion of Keanu Reeves playing Gabriel, a guardian angel overseeing menial tasks and hoping to make a larger impact in the world. 

When the Angel Gabriel stumbles upon Arj—a schlubby failed documentary editor caught in the gears of the gig economy and forced to live out of his car—he accidentally sets a small disaster in motion by swapping Arj’s life with that of his former employer, Jeff. Despite the apparent vanity of Jeff’s decadent venture capital lifestyle, Arj ends up falling in love with this life, while Jeff gets stuck in a humbling lesson as he learns just how miserable his app’s employees are struggling to survive on tips and delivery apps. The tables are now turned and both sides are face with the exhausted realities of each other’s lives—endless toil on one and hollow selfishness on the other. 

As all this is playing out, Gabriel finds himself winding up an unusual fish-out-of-water as he’s stuck trying to undo Arj’s selfish decisions and starts to realize how little he understood the misery of the people he’s been trying to help. He loses his title as an angel and starts to fall into the despair he wanted to help Arj escape. 

There’s a very millennial flavor to the film, no doubt inspired by the ongoing malaise of my generation as we’ve struggled to build post-college careers and watched our colleagues thrive in tech and finance. This is very much a story that front-loads the idea that rich people are selfish and vain and that the American Dream is dead. There’s not much subtlety, and it does break down frequently into preachiness. 

Gabriel ends up being both the film’s funniest and most endearing character and also one of its most thematically curious, given that his fecklessness and obliviousness set much of the plot into motion. He establishes the core theme of hope, but finds himself in over his head and reliant on others to fix their own problems. 

Such a portrayal definitely raises questions about the efficacy of faith in light of the coarseness of people’s problems. Despite being raised in a Muslim family, Ansari himself isn’t religious. The film’s irrelevance, mundanity, and comedic lightness, through its portrayal of Gabriel, hardly resemble the authoritative and confident Biblical Gabriel who appears in the Books of Luke and Daniel, whose mere presence is enough that he must assure his recipients to “Be not afraid.”  

Thankfully, Gabriel is ultimately proven right. In the end, the film ultimately does come around to the same moralistic core of its predecessors, offering a hopeful message about relying on others, building connections, and trusting in the future despite of the direness of one’s circumstances. The movie’s final moments are very sweet in this regard, recasting a story about self-centered characters genuinely becoming better people. 

In the final analysis, Good Fortune will ultimately live or die by whether that moral is the one viewers take out of it. It is often forgotten that Frank Capra’s moralism, in films like It’s A Wonderful Life, was tinged by a deep sense of Rooseveltian progressivism, which resulted in him being investigated by the FBI. But the film has staying power because of its religious undertones. Its deep sense of connection to eternal morals, its rejection of despair, and its celebration of common goodness among the average people of the world made it enduring and timeless, even if its anti-bank politics came straight out of the topical stresses of the 1930s.

In an age when populists, nationalists, socialists, and dissidents of all stripes are actively trying to overthrow normality, it is no surprise that we would see this sort of story archetype appear again. However, its endurance and staying power will ultimately come down to whether its moralism is more potent than its topicality, and that remains to be seen.
Thankfully, it’s funny and touching enough to recommend. Despite its preachiness, Good Fortune is quite good at capturing the mood of my generation, rightly pointing to the things in life that make it meaningful and transcending solipsism and deracination to admit that sometimes the most important thing in life is just to admit we need help from other people.

Tyler is a Wisconsin-based freelance critic and journalist, a member of the Music City Film Critics Association, a regular film and literature contributor at Geeks Under Grace, and was the 2021 College Fix Fellow at Main Street Nashville.