It's a strange thing, watching three millionaires make a movie about the pain of being poor.
In Good Fortune, Arj (Aziz Ansari) is a broke man sleeping in his car, stringing together part-time jobs and late-night takeout, trying to keep his head above water. Jeff (Seth Rogen) is his mirror opposite; wealthy, careless and entirely out of touch. When Angel Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) decides to teach Arj "a lesson about gratitude," he swaps their lives: the rich man becomes poor, the poor man becomes rich. What follows is a modern-day morality fable about empathy, excess and the illusion of happiness.
The idea isn't bad. It's Trading Places meets It's a Wonderful Life, or at least, it wants to be. The problem is tone. It's funny but never funny enough; thoughtful but never deep enough. Ansari plays Arj like a man constantly winking at the audience, too self-aware to make you believe his desperation. Seth Rogen's "rich jerk" persona is now so familiar it barely registers as acting and Keanu Reeves as a chain-smoking angel feels like a cosmic joke that doesn't quite land. He's the film's most watchable presence, though serene, strange and just human enough to remind you he's in on it.
But here's the awkward part: Ansari is reportedly worth around $25 million, Rogen $80 million and Reeves somewhere near $380 million. When these men stand in front of the camera to explore "the pain of the working class," it rings hollow. There's no malice in it, you can tell the intent is good, but it's still patronizing to watch wealthy artists play poverty for laughs, only to tie it up with a bow of self-discovery and moral clarity.
The irony is thick: Good Fortune wants to tell you that money doesn't buy happiness, while being made by people who've already bought the luxury of saying so and yet... the movie's not cynical. It's earnest in that uniquely Hollywood way, where the lesson is true but the messenger is suspect.
There is something to take from it, though. The story hints that everyone, rich or poor, wrestles with their own invisible weight. You can have a bank full of zeros and still feel empty; or have nothing and still find peace in the smallest thing. The problem is that Good Fortune tries to turn that quiet truth into a comedy about divine intervention and the result is a well-intentioned parable that lands like a lecture.
It's not the worst thing you'll watch this year, just one of the most conflicted. A film about empathy that struggles to feel empathetic. Watching it, you realize the same thing Gabriel eventually does: you can't fix someone else's life, not with wings, not with wealth. You can only hope to understand it and for most of Good Fortune, that hope gets lost somewhere between heaven and a Malibu mansion.
