Good Fortune review: 98 mins well spent — Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari are buying a stairway to heaven with Keanu Reeves

I could be a leader of a movement that makes Keanu Reeves eating a burger and chicken ‘nuggies’ a thing! Good Fortune is a movie that snuck up in our theatres, empty except for a couple of college kids bunking class and another commentator on the way movies are. A pity, because this 98-minute movie turned out to be 98 minutes well spent.

Keanu Reeves plays Gabriel, an angel who tries to do a job which another angel, Azrael, does so well and messes up. Of course, there’s hierarchy among angels too… And Gabriel loses his job (and his little wings… No one is immune to the effects of a gig economy!

Arj, played by Aziz Ansari, is a good guy having a never-ending bad day, week, month. He doesn’t have enough money to own a home, so he lives in his car, does thankless jobs on the taskmaster app - like standing in a queue for someone, working plumbing in hardware, cleaning garages and fixing stoves when he loses his moral compass…

Josh is played by Seth Rogen, a rich tech bro who lives alone above the city lights in a big house with a pool. He is kind to Arj and gives him a job…

Gabriel, fed up with saving humans who text while driving, loses his wings (tiny wings because he’s low on the angel ladder of achievement) because he tries to save Arj from his hopeless life and swaps it with Josh.

Josh is ready to slum it out. He’s sure Arj will give him his old life back. Arj loves Josh’s life because just like all of us, he too has a cousin, Naveen, who is living it up because he has a job with Microsoft…

OMG showed up on the big screen in 2012 and swept us up with its humour as well as life lessons about faith whilst taking digs at organised religion. OMG works even today because the humour is timeless. When Krishna drops off the non-believer and tells him to ‘go straight, then left and then right then…’ and the non-believer Kanji Lal Mehta says, ’If you are god, then you could drop me home, no?’ to which Krishna says, ’It’s my job to show you the way, you have to do the walking.’

In Good Fortune, when an angel has lost his way, it takes humans to show him that hope lives. The movie turns from fun to tear-inducing despair rather quickly. It could have been funnier but all that despair makes your coffee sort of sadder.

But it is so awesome to see Keanu Reeves dance, eat tacos and yes, realise that he saved lives even though his wings were tiny and his job a drudge. We live in such ghastly times when everyone covets the other guy’s life that we forget our humanity. Humanity that will help angels earn back their wings. So don’t forget to smile when you are on that endless zoom call or a team meeting and yes, leave an extra fifty out for the man who brings you your food, and a taco for Gabriel.