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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 Ayesha 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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Joining us today is the host of NPR's It's Been a Minute, Brittany Luce.
Hey, Brittany, welcome back.
Hi, I'm 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.
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 movie major on-screen 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.
He's primarily been focused on stand-up, 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, 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.
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.
I tried to show him that wealth wouldn't solve all his problems.
And?
It seems to have solved most of his problems.
I like that clip.
Can Arch get his life ironed out, including his budding relationship with a former co-worker played by Kiki Palmer?
And can Gabriel get a better angel gig?
Good Fortune is in theaters now.
Aisha, I want to start with you.
What'd you think about Good Fortune?
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.
Yeah.
I went into this knowing virtually nothing.
I wasn't expecting this to turn into a movie that was pro-union and pro-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 have a lot of the things that some of these characters have, like a sauna, 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.
All right, Brittany, how about you?
What'd you think about good fortune?
I actually feel very similarly to the description that you just gave Aisha.
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, I guess that was funny to someone.
Yes.
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.
Yeah.
Also, I remember loving the first two seasons of Master 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.
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 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 Keke 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 target.
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 in the past they were like.
They didn't see the vision.
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 invented.
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 was Not even because 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 plot politics and labor stuff was a little bit too neat for me in the way it wrapped up.
But overall, I laughed.
I had fun.
And I'll say something, man.
Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogen.
What kind of chemistry was that?
So great.
Get these guys – make a lethal weapon or one of those things.
Just put them together.
I want 10 of them.
Let's go, baby.
Yeah.
I think that was pretty much my response.
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.
He's like if Nicolas Cage was like conventionally handsome and super fit.
I think this is all so skillful on his part.
This angel has a sort of an innocence and a doofiness that comes through in a really winning kind of way.
Have some milkshake.
Wow.
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.
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, I still thought it was funny.
Like I said, as I 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 or in 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 Arj is like living it up in Jeff's life is very entertaining and fun.
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 the problems.
Yeah.
And it's like, well, solved a lot of his problems.
I thought that was kind of bracingly honest, 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.
Yes.
And I liked that about it.
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.
Right.
But there just was a lot in this that did just make me laugh and 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 maybe that will change at some point and maybe it won't.
It's interesting because 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 guy.
But also he's just like he's a comedic actor.
And I don't think that necessarily always translates to like actual comedy 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 And basking.
It was kind of giving me Parks and Rec vibes 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 and everyone involved in this movie, is kind of doing a Solomon's Travels sort of thing.
And Aziz Ansari has even talked about that movie before.
This is the Preston Sturges 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 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 he consulted various people about wealth inequality and income.
And 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.
Chris Smalls.
Yeah.
And Amazon.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah, I was excited when they kept the union plot line going and also like.
Kiki Palmer in her workplace as the person who's like really trying to lead the union drive.
Yeah, the black woman in the movie it didn't surprise me that it was black, 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.
Of course.
I agree with that.
I don't know.
It's a movie, man.
I felt like they pulled a couple punches at the very, very end.
But I also was pleased with how much that was central to the plot line.
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.
And I think a real romance would have like actually taken the movie up to 11.
But I mean again, the unexpected romance of the film that I did not see coming was Keanu Reeves with Seth Rogen.
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, like 25 years later, basically in his early 60s, playing this kind of himbo angel.
Who everyone comments upon as being extremely hot.
Everyone comments upon him being, 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 there.
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, 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.
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.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This episode is produced by Carly Rubin, Janae Morris and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
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