Even with Keanu Reeves as a heavenly interloper, 'Good Fortune' stumbles with sincerity

It’s casual to miss the assurance of Billy Wilder oregon Frank Capra whenever immoderate brave psyche tries to marque a drama that takes America’s somesthesia by straddling cynicism and optimism. Those Hollywood masters could handily juggle the sweet, sour and satirical and, successful Wilder’s case, adjacent permission you believing successful a blessed ending.

With his writing-directing diagnostic debut, “Good Fortune,” however, Aziz Ansari, who stars alongside Seth Rogen and Keanu Reeves (as an angel named Gabriel), swings big, hoping to seizure that jokey truth-telling vibe astir the State of Things. His taxable is simply a fertile 1 too: the gig system fostering our crushing inequity, but besides the desperation of the have-nots and however oblivious the affluent are astir those who made them rich. So let’s instrumentality it to the billionaires! Let Keanu assistance the downtrodden!

Ansari’s high-low morality tale, acceptable successful our just (and unfair) Los Angeles, is simply a affable melding of celestially tinged stories (“Heaven Can Wait,” “Wings of Desire”) and body-swap comedies (“Trading Places”). But arsenic agreeable arsenic it is, it can’t quadrate its jabs with its sentimentality. It’s got heart, benignant eyes, a wry grin and immoderate comic lines, but nary teeth erstwhile you truly request things bitten into, chewed up and spit out.

Ansari plays Arj, surviving a superior disconnection betwixt his nonrecreational individuality — wannabe Hollywood movie exertion — and however helium really exists: task-gigging for scraps and surviving successful his car. When a garage-reorganizing occupation for Jeff (Rogen), a Bel-Air task capitalist, turns into an adjunct position, Arj feels unafraid capable to usage the institution paper for a fancy meal with occasional workfellow and romanticist involvement Elena (an underused Keke Palmer). Jeff clocks the complaint the adjacent day, though (a realistic item astir the affluent watching each penny), and instantly fires Arj.

All along, Arj’s bittersweet concern has touched Reeves’ long-haired, khaki-suited angel, whose life-saving purview (he specializes successful jostling distracted drivers) is debased successful the hierarchy overseen by brag guardian Martha (Sandra Oh). Gabriel wants a large healing occupation to amusement Arj, with a small role-reversal magic, that being Jeff isn’t each it’s cracked up to be. Except, of course, it is. (David Mamet’s enactment “Everybody needs wealth — that’s wherefore they telephone it money” comes to mind.) The recently luxe-and-loving-it Arj shows nary signs of wanting to power backmost (which is seemingly his telephone to marque successful the rules of this scenario), leaving out-of-his-depth Gabriel successful the presumption of convincing a abrupt billionaire wherefore helium should spell backmost to being poor.

Which is wherever “Good Fortune,” for each its grasp of however Depression-era screwball comedies made the filthy affluent mockable, struggles to lucifer its issue-driven wit with its fix-it heart. While it’s comic to ticker Rogen’s freshly hopeless quality endure food-delivery humiliation, buying the script’s changes of bosom — and the film’s naïve thought of wherever everyone should beryllium astatine the extremity — is different matter. That’s wherefore screwball comedies didn’t effort to upend capitalism, conscionable person immoderate clever amusive with it and fto a elemental emotion communicative instrumentality the landing. Ansari’s ambition is admirable but he’s amended astatine diagnoses than solutions.

His gold-touch determination is giving the hilariously deadpan Reeves 1 of his champion roles successful years: a goofy meme brought to disarming beingness and the movie’s beating heart. Doing bully tin beryllium hard work; knowing humans is harder. Plus, Reeves makes eating a burger for the archetypal clip a sublimely comic reaffirmation that sometimes, indeed, it is simply a fantastic life.