Good Fortune Review

Good Fortune Review

Good Fortune is the latest comedy to hit theaters. This film stars Aziz Ansari, Seth Rogen, and Keanu Reeves. This is one that I was curious about because the trailer was good but I wasn’t sure if it’ll be a good comedy or a bad comedy. But the early reviews for the film were positive so my excitement grew. Now having seen the film, does the film lean towards a good comedy or a bad comedy? Let’s talk about it! 

The Good

I’ll just cut right to the chase, I dug this film and thought it was a very solid comedy. Sometimes there’s types of where you watch them and you never know how much you miss them. I feel like 2025 has been filled with several examples of this, whether that’s The Naked Gun, Roofman, and I think Good Fortune falls into that category. This is just a really funny comedy that feels like the type of film we’d get in the 2000s but then they kind of disappeared. It’s a comedy that’s funny, it has heart, and there’s some sort of hook about it that makes it this interesting movie. In the case of Good Fortune, it’s a comedy that tells this Freaky Friday type situation with two grown men plus Keanu Reeves as an angel. You hear that setup and you go “that could be kind of fun”. You watch the movie and it’s just as fun as you’d hoped it would be. There’s so much toxicity going on in the real world whether that’s related to politics or whatever. You get movies like Good Fortune that make you feel good. The film isn’t looking to dominate at the box office, projections I saw had it at an $8 million opening. I hope the positive word of mouth makes this film have good legs and it shows Hollywood that we want more movies like this. 

Another thing you have to talk about with this film is the cast and the performances. Everybody in here is very funny and they know how to be funny. Aziz Ansari had a ton of stand-out moments on Parks and Recreation. Seth Rogen has been in comedy for 25 years now. Both of them are really funny and know how to deliver the comedy really well. Neither one of them is doing something that we haven’t seen them do before. Rogen is essentially playing himself. Ansari has been playing the same type of character in everything that he’s been in. I don’t necessarily say that as a negative but just as expectations that you get what you expect from them. The real standout here is Keanu Reeves as Gabriel, he’s playing an angel. I thought he was the funniest character in the film and it makes you love Keanu Reeves more than you already do. He’s delivering all of these funny lines in just his normal deadpan tone. It’s kind of interesting that the two best comedy performances of 2025 are Liam Neeson in The Naked Gun and Keanu Reeves in this film. Both of them are doing their normal shtick but saying really funny lines while doing it. I don’t know what that says about the modern era of comedy, but it’s interesting. 

From there I’ve already talked about this several times in this review but the film is very funny. It’s a comedy and the most important part of a comedy is to make you laugh. This movie had my audience laughing out loud from beginning to end. Everybody gets multiple comedic moments that make you laugh out loud. I think the film really kicks into high gear when the body swap happens and you have Aziz Ansari in Seth Rogen’s life and Seth Rogen in Aziz Ansari’s life and just seeing all of the chaos that ensues from those two people switching lives plus Keanu messing everything up. But even before the body swap happens there’s a lot of great jokes. I was never bored watching the film, I think from beginning to end it had a nice steady stream of jokes. Once again as something I’ve talked about in this review, but it’s just refreshing to get a really solid comedy that had people laughing. I do think this film is better than The Naked Gun, just because I think the jokes were more consistent. But it’s great that within two and a half months we got two solid comedies that were making my audience laugh out loud. 

One of the things that surprised me about the film was what it’s trying to say. The film does have the body swap gimmick and all of the humor. But it’s also a film about rich people needing to help out the poor more. In 2025 that idea seems so relevant and something that I think is a good message to send out into the world. Especially when it’s made by people in Hollywood that have a lot of money, making a movie where the central theme is about rich people not being dicks is very interesting. I think at points it can be a bit heavy handed with how it’s communicating it, but it also tells it through story. It’s not just throwing it in there for the sack of social commentary. It’s throwing it in there because it ties into the themes and ideas of the film nicely. Every one of our leads, Ansari, Rogen, and Reeves all have a character arc that ties back to this idea. Rogen’s character gets the most obvious character arc because he’s playing the rich guy. But even the journey of the film changes Ansari’s character and he’s more happy by the end of it. One of the key points of storytelling is you have to create an adventure that the characters need to go on in order to be a better version of themselves. When you watch Good Fortune that’s exactly what happens. All of our leads become a better version of themselves by the end of it. 

Finally, I also appreciate that it’s a film that’s not trying to be anything more than it is. The film knows that it’s a 98 minute long comedy and that’s all it is. It’s not trying to be a billion dollar franchise or making a ton of money. Aziz Ansari probably just wanted to make a comedy that had a good message and entertained people for those 98 minutes and I think he did that. Since modern day blockbusters have turned into four quadrant films that are designed to please everybody, but very few of them actually do so, I like that we get a simple comedy that’s staying in its lane. 

The Bad

There’s not a whole lot about this film that bothered me or frustrated me. I will say I do think the Keke Palmer character was a bit underused and underdeveloped. She’s established early on to have a friendship, possible relationship with Aziz Ansari’s character. She’s prominent in the film, she appears all throughout the film. But it still felt like her and her purpose felt very undercooked. I felt like we needed to spend more time with them before the switch happened to help with Aziz’s character arc in the film. I didn’t think the film did a good enough job of making you care and understand why Aziz is attached to this woman and loves her. 

Also, I do think the final 5ish minutes of the film felt a bit stretched out. All of the stuff in the final moments as they’re wrapping things up is very important and 100% should be in the film. But the way it’s structured and how it plays out felt a bit choppy to me and I wish they found a way to tighten it up more to make it flow better and not feel like it dragged on for longer than it needed to. Once again, keep those scenes in the film but I wish they found a way either in the writing or editing to make it flow better. 

The Score: 8.6/10 (B)