Aziz Ansari returns with socialist comedy ‘Good Fortune’

The economic maladies portrayed in Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune have degrees of legitimacy and resonance, but they are rooted in a profoundly misguided worldview. This is Ansari’s first major work since his 2018 #MeToo cancellation — sparked by a tabloid exposé of a bad date — and he returns with a script and directorial debut that combines the stubbornly obtuse economics of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath with the blithe tone of a buddy comedy.

Ansari casts himself as Arj, a downtrodden documentary filmmaker working odd jobs to get by. The film fixates much of its ire on the gig economy; Arj is seen doing everything from food delivery to standing in line for others — anything to make ends meet. He is no noble, starving artist from Puccini’s La Bohème but simply broke, exhausted, and ready to surrender. Despondent, he is visited by Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a guardian angel in this modernized pastiche of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), where the ostensibly malevolent banker has been replaced by a bumbling tech millionaire named Jeff, played by Seth Rogen.  

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Jeff, we are told, has presided over a string of successful startups and now sits on the board of a venture capital firm. Yet Rogen’s stoner disposition makes this difficult to believe, and like most of Hollywood’s effigies of capitalism, his character is never shown doing any actual work. “All I did was go on vacation and attend very easy Zoom meetings,” he says, dismissively summarizing his economic contributions.

The film’s narrative lives in this setup of economic extremes: Jeff, the lavish millionaire with a fleet of Porsches who seemingly did nothing to earn any of it; Arj, the penniless filmmaker sleeping in his Volkswagen while juggling numerous jobs; and Gabriel, their celestial middleman. It is admittedly refreshing to see Reeves in a role that doesn’t involve him shooting anyone. Lacking the seniority required to meddle in mortal affairs, Gabriel is tasked with saving distracted drivers from texting behind the wheel, an objectively more important assignment than moral lecturing. But pity weakens his restraint. Overstepping protocol, he uses guardian-angel wizardry to swap Arj’s life with Jeff’s, hoping to teach him that riches are not a remedy for hopelessness. Instead, he is startled to discover that, at least in the short term, “it seems money and riches solved all his problems.”

The film’s leftist leanings surface most clearly here. Propagating the fixed-pie fallacy, Good Fortune suggests that the wealthy exist only at the expense of people like Arj. As Jeff declares late in the film, “The main reason we have it so good is that there’s a shit-ton of people who have it bad, very bad. And we need them to have it bad, because it’s what allows us to have it good.” That, along with a monologue from Arj declaring that “the American dream is dead,” leaves the film bloated with bumper-sticker Marxism masquerading as wisdom. Extolling the virtues of free markets or economic growth simply does not have the same populist appeal.

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A parallel plotline involves Elena (Keke Palmer), a browbeaten hardware store employee attempting to rouse her coworkers into forming a union, as Arj’s love interest. Her subplot is a bit too on the nose, and Elena’s screen presence feels muted for such a loud personality. Her primary function is to remind Arj — while enjoying Jeff’s appropriated lifestyle — that flying her to Paris, taking her to ritzy restaurants, and showering her with gifts will not win her affections. Yes, there is more to life than money. That revelation, at least, survives the film’s ideological muddle.

The hardships faced by gig workers that Ansari depicts are genuine, but the film’s cartoonish approach to economics reduces their causes to little more than capitalist avarice. Yet its socialist canards aside, Good Fortune is a witty and genuinely funny comedy driven by charismatic performances. And by the end, Ansari’s character arrives, however sentimentally, at a worthwhile conclusion: Life, despite hardship, is still worth living.

Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.

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