Good Fortune

In Good Fortune, Keanu Reeves plays a doofy, well-meaning guardian angel named Gabriel who gets a little too involved in the life of a gig worker named Arj (Aziz Ansari). In trying to teach Arj a life lesson, Gabriel grants him the opportunity to swap places with a finance mogul (Seth Rogen). This mostly buddy comedy is Ansari’s feature directorial debut and has a bit to say about wealth inequality and even some musings on what makes life meaningful. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Linda Holmes?

  Having a guardian angel is supposed to be a good thing. But in the new comedy Good Fortune, a guy who's trying to survive in the gig economy learns that not all angels are equally helpful. Starring Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, and Aziz Ansari, the movie is mostly a buddy comedy with a bit of commentary on wealth inequality and even some musings on what makes life meaningful. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes. And today, we're talking about Good Fortune on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 1:55Linda Holmes?

  Joining us today is the host of NPR's It's Been a Minute, Brittany Luce. Hey, Brittany, welcome back.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Hi, so happy to be here with both of y'all. I can't remember the last time I recorded with the two of you together.

• 2:04Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. Absolutely. It's so good to see you. So Good Fortune is written and directed by Aziz Ansari. It's his feature directorial debut and his first major onscreen acting role since Netflix's Master of None. He mostly stepped back from acting around the time he was accused of sexual misconduct by an anonymous woman in 2018. He's addressed the allegation multiple times, most recently telling The Hollywood Reporter he apologized to the woman. He's primarily been focused on standup, and now he's garnering controversy for his recent participation at Saudi Arabia's state-sponsored Riyadh Comedy Festival. Ansari said he decided to participate because he felt he had a choice whether to, quote,

• 2:48Linda Holmes?

  "isolate or engage," and he hoped to push things in a positive direction. He also said part of his fee from the festival will go to causes that support human rights. Human Rights Watch in particular has said it can't accept donations from Ansari or other comedians who participated in the festival. So this movie is coming out at a particularly tricky moment for him, and it's a big project since, as we said, it's his first feature as a writer and director. So in the movie, he plays Arj, a documentary filmmaker who's trying to get by in the gig economy, working through an app that sends him out to do little jobs, whether it's help around the house or stand in line so somebody else doesn't have to.

• 3:30Linda Holmes?

  On a job, he meets Jeff, played by Seth Rogen, an extremely rich venture capitalist who hires Arj to be his assistant. So far, so relatively normal. What Arj doesn't know is that he's being watched by Gabriel, played by Keanu Reeves, a low-level guardian angel who wants a more meaningful assignment than saving people who are texting and driving. He spots Arj and decides this is a guy he can help, but his interventions do not go as planned.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  I tried to show him that wealth wouldn't solve all his problems.

• 4:02Linda Holmes?

  And?

• 4:03Speaker 04

  It seems to have solved most of his problems.

• 4:06Linda Holmes?

  I like that clip. Can Arj get his life ironed out, including his budding relationship with a former coworker, played by Kiki Palmer? And can Gabriel get a better Angel gig? Good Fortune is in theaters now. Ayesha, I want to start with you. What'd you think about Good Fortune?

• 4:21Aisha Harris?

  I had a very pleasant time at this movie. And I went into it with kind of mid to low expectations, just because it has been a minute since, at least, I've been paying attention to Aziz Ansari, even though I was a huge fan of the first two seasons of Master of None. I've seen him do stand-up, post what you talked about. I was actually at one of those tapings of him talking about the sexual misconduct allegations that later became a special. So like, I, generally speaking, really gravitate towards his comedy. And Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, they're my dudes. Like, I love them in most things. I shouldn't have had low expectations, and yet I did. And I feel like they exceeded them.

• 5:04Aisha Harris?

  I went into this knowing virtually nothing. I wasn't expecting this to turn into a movie that was like, pro-union and pro, like, sticking it to the man to some extent. And we can maybe talk about that more later and how that pans out in a movie that is still a Hollywood movie that also stars people who

• 5:23Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 5:23Aisha Harris?

  have a lot of the things that some of these characters have, like Asana, or may have those things. But overall, I found this really fun, funny. There's a lot of fun jokes. And I think it twists the knife a little bit more than I was expecting it to in terms of how it deals with wealth inequality. Again, the bar is very, very low, but I think it cleared it for me at least. So I had a good time with this.

• 5:47Linda Holmes?

  All right, Brittany, how about you? What'd you think about Good Fortune?

• 5:49Speaker 03

  I actually feel very similarly to the description that you just gave, Ayesha. Like, my bar was low for some reason. I think just because, like, I don't know. I love to laugh. I love to laugh. But sometimes I see comedies and I'm like, "Mm-hmm, I guess that was funny to someone."

• 6:04Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  I don't know. So it's like, you can put a lot of funny people together in a movie, and it can still come out kind of like, "I don't know."

• 6:09Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Also, I remember loving the first two scenes of Master of None. Of none. And then the third season I watched for work and it was very notable how the third season moved away from having Aziz Ansari in a romantic context.

• 6:21Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  But I saw in the trailer, I was like, I think there's going to be a romance with Kiki Palmer. And I was thinking like, that's interesting. Like, you know, your first time up at bat, your first time really back on screen since this show that you had that was a romantic comedy and then, and now you're coming back and there is a romance that's central to the plot in some ways. That was kind of in the back of my mind, watching the film, but mostly, I mean, I'll say this, like, Kiki Palmer, Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves, that's a combination to get me activated and motivated. And also too, I was thinking about it after I saw the film and I was like, oh, it's a marketer's dream. Like you hit every possible like movie going demographic by including those three people. Obviously I adore Keanu Reeves. I had a question on Seth Rogen, since I was like 14, watching Freaks and Geeks, which a lot of people were in the past, they were like, they didn't see the vision.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  And I'm like, sometimes if you build it, they will come. And it's been amazing to see how his career has blossomed and just like, I love platonic, I love the studio. It's been really amazing to see how he's just really just gotten better as an actor. But I'll say overall, I thought the story was like, it was fun, it was inventive. And I felt like the first half of it, they had me, I was in it. The second half, I think for me, because the romance element, not even because of I had the allegations in mind, but more so because Kiki Palmer and Aziz Ansari just didn't have great chemistry. To me, the romance is something that should have been more of a motivator to kind of push the movie toward the end. And I felt like the romance, it felt kind of tacked on. And then also some of like the politics and labor stuff was a little

• 7:52Speaker 03

  bit too neat for me in the way it wrapped up. But overall, like, I laughed, I had fun. And I'll say something, man, Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogen, what kind of chemistry was that?

• 8:02Linda Holmes?

  So great.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Get these guys, make a lethal weapon or some, one of those things, just put them together. I want 10 of them. Let's go, baby.

• 8:08Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. I think that was pretty much my response is like, I share the sense that I think both of you have talked about that the effort to talk about money and rich people has certainly some problems. But I do think For me, the movie as a hang, I thought was really fun. Keanu Reeves to me is always so interesting because it is so easy to look at him in so many films, this one included, and think like, like, is he just like a weird actor? But I think he is.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  He's like if Nicolas Cage was like conventionally handsome and super fit.

• 8:43Linda Holmes?

  I think this is all so skillful on his part.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 8:48Linda Holmes?

  This angel has a, a sort of an innocence and a doofiness that comes through in a really winning kind of way.

• 8:59Speaker 06

  Have some milkshake. Wow.

• 9:03Speaker 06

  Jeff, could you imagine seeing strawberries for thousands of years and never actually knowing the sweet taste enclosed in those magical berries? I can't imagine, and in all fairness, that's a chocolate milkshake.

• 9:16Linda Holmes?

  The stuff about how his job is mostly people who are texting and driving, I did think was really funny. And every time they brought it up again, it's, I still thought it was funny. Like I said, as a hang with these three actors, I thought it was really entertaining. They go into a whole thing, and they've talked about this in the publicity around the movie. So I don't think it's a spoiler, but they go into a whole thing where, you know, with the intervention of this angel, they basically trade lives, the Seth Rogen character, who's this mogul, and Aziz Ansari, who's this guy who has very, very little money. And I do think some of the stuff where Aziz Ansari are, is like, living it up in Jeff's life is very entertaining and fun.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:58Linda Holmes?

  And I do think that that clip that we played where he says, like, I really wanted this guy to understand money wouldn't solve all problems. And it's like, well, solved a lot of his problems.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:08Linda Holmes?

  I thought that was kind of bracingly honest.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:11Linda Holmes?

  Right? And I think that's an interesting place for the movie to start from, which is like, movies have this way of being like, you know, rich people are secretly miserable and all that stuff. And I thought it was sort of good that this movie was like, listen, a lot of the problems that this guy has in his life would indeed be at least partially. Solved if he had money.

• 10:31Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yeah.

• 10:32Linda Holmes?

  And I liked that about it, you know, and it's such an affable film. I'm very into the current incarnation of Seth Rogen. I think he's done such a good job of kind of moderating his performances and switching it up a little bit, even though he's always like fundamentally still himself. But there just was a lot in this that did just make me laugh and I I appreciated that a lot. Despite the fact that I agree with Brittany, that seeing Ansari in a romantic comedy right now is still a little bit distracting to me. And I sort of leave myself space to be distracted by that. And, you know, maybe that will change at some point and maybe it won't.

• 11:08Aisha Harris?

  It's interesting because like, again, we don't have to go into the whole thing, all of that controversy around him. But for me, it's less about Aziz Ansari as like, whatever he may or may not have done, or how he's treated people in real life. But like, even if you go back and watch the original Master of None, like the first season or two, it's like, he's not a conventional romantic interest. But also, he's just like, he's a comedic actor. And I don't think that necessarily always translates to like, actual ability, convey emotions in a convincing way. And so I don't think that has changed since like 2015, when Master of None first arrived on the scene. For me, what works best is him sort of basking.

• 11:53Aisha Harris?

  It was kind of giving me Parks and Rec vibe, like him basking in the richness, like treat yourself, like all of that, you know? And I guess like, what I find interesting about this movie as an exercise is the fact that like, Aziz and Seth Rogen, everyone involved in this movie is kind of doing a Sullivan's travels sort of thing. And Aziz Ansari has even talked about that movie. This is, you know, the Preston Sturgis comedy classic where this director, he decides, he's made popcorn fluff for his entire career and he's very successful. But he's like, I want to make a serious movie. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to like, live life and basically cosplay as a drifter for my research. And I'm not saying that he's doing that, but he has said in interviews that like, he consulted various people about wealth inequality and income and like,

• 12:38Aisha Harris?

  Part of me is like, okay, of course, this sounds great for people to feel better about watching this movie. But at the same time, I kind of want to be like, at least you're trying and at least you're trying to say something here. I think some of the transparent digs at things like Amazon, even though Amazon is never explicitly named. There are scenes where we see people wearing what looks like Amazon uniforms and then they reference pee bottles, which of course, Amazon has been known for the working conditions being so bad that they were involved in a lawsuit because drivers reportedly had to pee in bottles. So like, it was interesting to watch this movie. I actually recently watched a documentary called Union, which came out last year and it's profiling the labor union that was led by Chris Smalls.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Chris Smalls, yeah, and Amazon.

• 13:25Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, at the Amazon warehouse, one of them in Staten Island. So like, seeing those things back to back, they're two very different modes of how they're approaching these things. But just the fact that this is in Hollywood and people are talking about it, I mean, again, low bar. But I admire that it at least tries to wrestle with those things in a way that I found somewhat satisfying.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was excited when they kept the union plotline going and also like Kiki Palmer in her workplace is the person who's like really trying to lead the union drive.

• 13:56Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, the black woman in the movie.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  It didn't surprise me that it was a black woman who was doing that at the workplace. But yeah, I did like that that was included. I think I felt like at the very end, I don't want to give anything away, obviously, but I felt like things just tied up a little bit too neatly. For actually how much time the movie actually spent on talking about wealth inequality and how unions are good.

• 14:15Aisha Harris?

  Of course, I agree with that.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's a movie, man. Y'all could have just, like, I felt like they pulled a couple punches at the very, very end. But I also was pleased with how much that was like central to the plotline. And also, I liked the fact that that was something that made Kiki Palmer's character, Elena, more attractive as a romantic interest, like she had like values and that she wasn't afraid to stand up for them and she had a backbone. And I thought that was nice. But I believed in their romance because they showed it to me enough, but I felt like there was opportunity in the story for that to be more of a driver. A real romance would have like actually taken the movie up to 11.

• 14:51Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  But I mean, again, the unexpected romance of the film that I did not see coming was Keanu Reeves with Seth Rogen.

• 14:58Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  I think Seth Rogen is an obvious character actor, but Keanu Reeves is also a character actor. He's an action star, but he's also a character actor. And I think that that's something that like I didn't really process until watching this film. For some reason, I had seen The Matrix in theaters like literally the week before. So like having seen Keanu Reeves on a huge screen the week before and then seeing him again in a totally different context, like 25 years later, basically in his early 60s, playing this kind of himbo angel.

• 15:28Linda Holmes?

  Who everyone comments upon as being extremely hot.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Everyone comments upon him. Like, he's like tall, long hair, hot. And I loved that running gag. There's moments where you see him kind of observing human life very closely as if for the first time. And like, there's like a sense of genuine wonder that is like contagious. And really, actually, to me, in many ways, his performance is kind of like what holds the film together. I don't know. To me, it's like he was like the soloist at some moments where I was like, you are doing such a load bearing monologue right now. And yeah, like it got me thinking a lot more about like, yeah, Keanu Reeves is a character actor. And I think that like, thinking about him that way, to me, it felt like it slipped something into focus in my mind.

• 16:13Linda Holmes?

  Well, yeah, I think we all thought this movie was pretty much a fun watch of these particular guys, at the very least. Tell us what you think about Good Fortune. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Brittany Luce, Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here.

• 16:36Aisha Harris?

  Thank you.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 16:38Linda Holmes?

  This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Janey Morris, and Mike Katsev, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show, support public radio, and get all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happyhour, or visit the link, which is right down in our show notes. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.

• 17:15Speaker 02

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