Keanu Reeves And Seth Rogen's Whimsical 2025 Fantasy Movie Is A Great Weekend Watch On Prime Video

Aziz Ansari's 2025 comic morality play "Good Fortune" — which marked his feature directorial debut — has a novel premise. Keanu Reeves stars as Gabriel, an angel with tiny wings whose primary job on the earthly plane is to make sure people don't text while driving. It's not a very auspicious job for a guardian angel, and Gabriel wishes he could be more like Azrael (Stephen McKinley Henderson), an angel who saves people's souls by altering reality around them. It seems that angels, too, have seen Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life."

Gabriel locates a lost soul in the form of Arj (Ansari), an impoverished sad sack who lives hand-to-mouth. For a brief period, Arj worked as the personal assistant to a super-rich techbro named Jeff (Seth Rogen), but he never really pulled himself out of his financial woes and was even fired for essentially being too poor. In response, Gabriel appears to Arj and tells him that money cannot buy happiness. To prove this point, Gabriel magically swaps Arj and Jeff's lives, making Arj a wealthy techbro and Jeff his hardscrabble assistant. To Arj's delight and Gabriel's dismay, however, it seems that money actually can buy happiness.

Because of all this, Gabriel is punished by his angelic boss (Sandra Oh) and will only be brought out of heavenly probation if he can get Arj and Jeff to willingly agree to swap back. The problem? Arj loves his new wealth. Jeff, meanwhile, might be the one who ultimately needs a lesson about the struggles of the gig economy.

Curious to learn more? "Good Fortune" is currently on Prime Video, and it's a perfect weekend watch.

Aziz Ansari had his big break back in 2007 when he co-created and starred in the MTV sketch comedy series "Human Giant" alongside Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer. The series only lasted two seasons, but that was mostly because Ansari landed a much more lucrative gig in 2009: playing the callow Tom Haverford on the beloved NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation." His TV and stand-up career thereafter bloomed, and listing all his TV credits here would take too long. I will pause, at least, to mention his series "Master of None," which Ansari created, wrote, directed, produced, and starred in for Netflix. Most recently, he has been playing Kash Patel on "Saturday Night Live."

Film-wise, Ansari has appeared in movies like "I Love You Man," "Funny People," "Get Him to the Greek," and "This is the End." He was originally slated to make his feature directorial debut on "Being Mortal," but the film was shut down when sexual misconduct allegations were made against its star, Bill Murray. Prior to that, Ansari had also taken a brief career hiatus after facing his own sexual misconduct allegations in 2018, although the circumstances of the incident in question revealed gray areas and miscommunication. In 2019, his stand-up special "Right Now" was nominated for a Grammy.

Somewhat surprisingly, though, "Good Fortune" didn't fare well commercially despite not having much direct competition and co-starring big names like Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer, along with Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves, and Ansari. Of course, comedy movies have struggled at the box office in general post-2020, so maybe it's not all that shocking.

If nothing else, casting Keanu Reeves as an angel is just a savvy idea. Reeves may have limited range as an actor (we were right to titter at his performances in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and "Much Ado About Nothing"), but it's pretty well known that he is an aggressively decent human being. Indeed, he has a reputation for being kind, relaxed, caring, and enthusiastic.

Critics, at the least, were kind to "Good Fortune." Reviewing the film for NPR, Bob Mondello seemed to nail the critical consensus, writing that the morality of "Good Fortune" may be a little simplistic, but having Reeves onboard makes it a great hang-out experience. "As a writer, [Aziz Ansari] is better at crafting funny scenes than at getting them to hang together," to quote Mondello directly, "so the social commentary feels at once well-meaning and slightly out-of-touch."

Writing for the Boston Globe, Odie Henderson argued that Reeves and Keke Palmer really carry the entire film, giving its fantastical comedic premise a little bit of humanity. Henderson added that he needed to see the movie twice to really appreciate how transcendent Reeves is, writing:

"[S]ince I wrote my initial, mildly negative response after seeing the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, I haven't stopped thinking about Reeves's performance. Every now and then, I found myself chuckling about it, and also remembering the earnestness in Palmer's work. As a result, the guardian angel in charge of punching me in the nose when I'm on the fence between 2-1/2 and 3 stars has convinced me to give 'Good Fortune' a passing grade."

/Film's own review cited Reeves as the funniest part of "Good Fortune" as well, in case you need more convincing. As mentioned, it's streaming on Prime Video right now.