Director: Aziz Ansari
Cast: Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Keanu Reeves
Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Been sitting on my to-be-watched DVD shelf for the better part of six months.
Did I Like It: Someone said to me recently—and we’ve all heard similar laments, I’m sure—that the the mid-range drama or comedy targeted for adults have become an extinct species. It’s not even that everything is comic books now, but that almost everything—recent sleeper horror hits like Obsession (2025) or Backrooms (2026) come to mind—is geared towards moviegoers no older than twenty-five. Never mind that this phenomenon has been lamented/noted since before I was born. The films are there, and Good Fortune is proof. Now, it may be a little more important that you seek these films out during their theatrical exhibition if they are going to continue to exist, but on any number of levels, that’s going to be a discussion for a different day.
I think when the book is finally closed on the 2020s—and that probably couldn’t come fast enough—this film might serve as the perfect picture of living in this decade, aside from all the pandemics and politics and somehow politicized pandemics. We may have money, we may not. We’re all miserable. About the only way we can enjoy ourself is if we blind ourselves to reality. I’m not even sure I agree with that sentiment, but then again that might be evidence that I’m blinding myself to something.
One might be struck by the fact that Reeves is doing nothing much more than playing a role tailor-made for him, but he’s such a singular, delightful screen presence that it almost seems a shame to put him in any other context. It might have seemed a bit silly in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) but I think we can all blind ourselves just a little bit and enjoy what he has to offer.