“Good Fortune” - How do angels get their wings?

Good Fortune, a movie featuring Aziz Ansari and Seth Rogen - and Keanu Reeves as an inept angel - seemed like exactly the kind of movie I was craving. Something light-hearted and goofy because I just wanted to laugh for a couple hours. To forget about real life for a while. Definitely not to be depressed and pissed off at society at the conclusion of the film. You had ONE job, funny guys.

Arj (Ansari) is a gig worker living in his car. His gigs include being paid to stand in line for hours to buy a bagel, sorting crap in someone’s garage, and doing somebody’s laundry. This isn’t some new career invented in the last decade, by the way. People like Arj used to be referred to as assistants, maids, servants, or butlers. The difference is those people were typically employed full-time by whomever they were serving, sometimes being housed by those same employers. Think Downton Abbey or The Help or The Devil Wears Prada, but way, way more depressing.

After completing a gig for rich, tech-bro, venture capitalist Jeff (Rogen), Arj convinces Jeff to hire him as a full-time assistant. Everything starts to look up for Arj and by up I mean barely making enough money to live in a disgusting motel instead of his car. Unfortunately, Arj gets fired for using Jeff’s corporate credit card to pay for a dinner date one night, despite promising Jeff he would pay back the money. Arj soon finds there’s an even deeper rock bottom when his car/house gets towed. Hilarious, right?

Observing all this is an angel named Gabriel (Reeves). Not to be confused with the archangel from the Bible who serves as God’s messenger, Reeves’ Gabriel is entrusted with the responsibility of subtly alerting texting-while-driving humans into avoiding imminent accidents. Gabriel took an interest in Arj when he noticed Arj texting about having nothing to live for and believes Arj is a lost soul that needs to be saved. Despite Gabriel’s boss Martha (Sandra Oh) telling Gabriel not to stray from his assigned duties, Gabriel decides to Trading Places (or Freaky Friday for the gig generation) Jeff and Arj.

Gabriel thinks that if Arj spends a few days in the shoes of a rich person, Arj will realize his old, destitute life was worth living. Clearly, Gabriel is woefully naive, if not a complete moron. As Arj puts it a few days later “being rich solved all my problems.” Yeah, of course it did. That’s why rich people never give away all their money. The problem Gabriel now has is that he can’t restore Jeff and Arj to their former lives until Arj wants to go back. And, of course Arj doesn’t want to go back. And Jeff definitely wants his life back after trying and failing to live in Arj’s shoes for a few days.

Instead of using all of this setup to steer us to ha-ha land, writer/producer/director Ansari decided steer us in the opposite direction by focusing film on a bunch of social issues. Which for the record, is very admirable; our society is pretty messed up and getting worse much faster since the 2024 election. On top of the overt commentary regarding the plight of gig workers and the gig economy in general (including the desperation for good ratings in the apps used to hire gig workers), Ansari dives into unionization efforts, privileges certain people are born into, people working three jobs just to survive (living wages), and the callousness and ignorance of people who say idiotic things like “they can just get better jobs if they don’t like it.”

The messages do get across, but they are softened, if not altogether blunted, by the inclusion of the clueless Gabriel. After Gabriel’s colossal screw up, Martha fires him and makes him human (though says she will reconsider if Arj chooses to go back to his former life). Many of the messages Ansari wants to get across come via Gabriel, which makes the poor versions of Jeff and Arj redundant. And Gabriel steals the show every time he reacts in surprise to a first human experience. Eating a hamburger, sweating, or expressing disappointment when he sees how much of his first paycheck isn’t going into his pocket are all given the same weight in the screenplay. It’s funny unless it’s tragic.

Good Fortune isn’t a bad movie, but it is very confused about what it’s supposed to be. The entire cast, including Keke Palmer as Arj’s love interest Elena, do what they can to lift the film, but the screenplay can’t get of its or their way. There are occasional moments of comedy, but they are dwarfed by the serious issues in the film. And all muddled by the inclusion of angels doing menial tasks. Which might be an even sadder existence than the life of a gig worker.

Rating: Ask for twelve dollars back and remember to give me a good review.

“Dumb Money” - Cha-ching!

People love to fantasize about striking it rich in various ways. Winning the lottery, nailing the parlay at the track, becoming a YouTube star, or inheriting a fortune from cranky old Aunt Ethyl after she falls into a pile of fur coats and suffocates to death. What’s that? Aunt Ethyl is okay? Thank goodness.

Of all the various ways to get rich, playing the stock market might be the one people believe they have the best chance at. Like the recent explosion in legal sports gambling, investing in stocks has become radically easier thanks to the Internet. And, like all those other get-rich avenues (including good old-fashioned casinos), the stock market is rigged to favor the house. Oh sure, we the underdog have a chance to win it big, but that chance is tinier than Aunt Ethyl’s generosity.

In Dumb Money, Keith Gill (Paul Dano) is the underdog. Keith is a lower-middle-class financial analyst by day and a vlogging webcaster by night. Under the excellent monikers Roaring Kitty and DeepFuckingValue, Keith discusses his personal financial choices in YouTube videos and posts on a subreddit page called WallStreetBets. Believing that GameStop stock is undervalued and the company itself is worth investing in, Keith invests his life savings ($53,000) in the stock and posts a screenshot of his portfolio to prove to his viewers the investment is real. As the weeks and months go by, he continues to vlog about the stock’s progress, using his portfolio spreadsheets as the background in his videos to maintain credibility. And Keith’s investment risk is real, as his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley) and baby are in this boat with him.

Meanwhile, the villains of the story are betting the opposite of Keith. Hedge fund managers Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) and Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio) have heavily invested in short sells of GameStop stock, believing the company is on the brink of bankruptcy. Plotkin and Cohen are always featured talking to each other on the phone while walking around their ostentatious mansions. Occasionally, another hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin (Nick Offerman), will call in to offer smug support. Offerman-as-Griffin perfectly oozes contempt and condescension at his less-rich counterparts, but is willing to help them in the same way the witch is willing to help Hansel and Gretel.

Finally, we have the rest of the common folk, a.k.a. retail investors, derisively referred to as Dumb Money by the villains. The common folk are you and me and nurses and salesclerks and massively indebted college students (America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, Myha’la Herrold, and Talia Ryder in this movie’s example) who have proverbial pennies to invest in the stock market. As Keith’s videos start to gain attention and new followers, the previously mentioned common folk invest what various amounts they can in GameStop stock, inspired by Keith’s easygoing honesty.

As Keith and company follow the slow, steady, upward climb of their stock, we are treated to updates to each person’s value. In an ingenious bit of inspiration, the film introduces every character we meet by giving us their name and net worth (in dollars) printed on screen, ranging from Keith’s solid $90,000 to Keith’s brother’s (Pete Davidson) dozens of dollars to the college students’ six-figure debts. The 99% of us can easily relate to those people. And we also get the same for the hedge fund managers, with their eight- and nine-figure fortunes. The 99% of us can easily hate those people.

In case you weren’t aware, Dumb Money is based on recent true events. While the common folk were invented for dramatic purposes, Keith and the hedge fund trio are actual people. As the stock price continued to climb and GameStop didn’t go bankrupt, the hedge fund managers started to panic about a “short squeeze.” In very basic terms, the hedge funds were all losing massive amounts of money while the commoners were actually realizing the American Dream. Adding to the story is that the investing turned into a cause. When the subreddit community realized that the rich hedge fund managers could just bail each other out, the community vowed to hang on to the stock and keep buying to drive the price ever further. The film does a great job of building the tension by bouncing between the various characters, making us wonder if the commoners are going to cash out and the hedge fund managers are going to go broke before the reality that rich people rarely ever lose comes crashing down on the community.

As good as the story is, the performances really make the film. While Dano does a decent job of delivering a protagonist that we can get behind, my favorite characters are the trio of hedge fund managers and the two college students. As much as I enjoyed Ferrera’s nurse and Ramos’ GameStop clerk, the two college students’ throwing caution to the wind was so much more fun to root for. Almost as much fun as rooting for Plotkin to end up under a pile of trash like the Duke brothers from Trading Places.

Perhaps the best aspect of the movie is that the filmmakers subtly make the film better by doing the opposite of a couple of things that normally make movies worse. One is that they open the film in a chaotic and off-putting way, using abrasive music and quickly jumping between a bunch of characters. They throw a bunch of dissonant stuff at us really quickly, practically daring us to walk out of the film before it’s even really started. The other is that most of the characters have almost no development beyond their name and net worth. Character development is usually key to get the audience to sympathize with characters. In this case, we need the commoners to stay common. Anything more and they might feel artificial, even special. That’s why showing us their names and net worth works so well - that’s all we need.

Despite knowing how the real-life story played out, I was still captured by the film. Why wouldn’t I be? I love an underdog story as much as anyone, especially one where the underdog has a chance to strike it rich. Just like me, if I can find a couple more fur coats to add to the pile.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back because this investment was worth it.

“The Fabelmans” - It’s not Fabelman. It’s Fabel-Man. He’s a fable...man.

After watching The Fabelmans, I wondered what certain directors’ childhoods might look like. I imagine Martin Scorsese had a nanny who was also a hitman. Baz Luhrmann rarely ate food that wasn’t laced with LSD. George Romero constantly buried his friends on the beach. Quentin Tarantino definitely tortured animals. Stanley Kubrick was the kid in The Shining. And Steven Spielberg? For sure a kid with a video camera at all times, maybe even a clapboard tucked into his belt. The Fabelmans shows that video camera and more.

Similar to James Gray’s Armageddon Time, The Fabelmans is a fictionalized depiction of parts of Spielberg’s childhood. Unlike Armageddon Time, The Fabelmans has a plot and also a point. It’s right there in the title - Spielberg is going to tell us a story with a moral.

Spielberg’s analogue is Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle). We first meet young Sammy as he is being coerced into a movie theater by his parents, Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams) to see The Greatest Show on Earth. Sammy is scared of seeing giant people on screen and parents assure him that they aren’t really that big. Once inside, Sammy is transfixed by what he sees on screen, instantly falling in love with moving pictures. This could be the end of the story, one quick anecdote to explain Spielberg’s love of film, but Spielberg is a better storyteller than that.

Back home, Sammy tries to recreate the train wreck scene from the movie. While Burt scolds Sammy for not taking care of his trains, Mitzi encourages Sammy, lending Sammy Burt’s 8MM camera. After a successful recreation, Sammy starts making films with his three sisters, gradually working out how to do different kinds of effects and clearly having fun. Sammy has clearly found his calling, much to the chagrin of his computer-building father and delight of his pianist mother. Then, his father gets a job offer in Phoenix, Arizona and the family moves there, taking with them Burt’s best friend and business partner Bennie (Seth Rogen).

It’s in Phoenix that the film really gets into the meat of Spielberg’s childhood story. After several years of honing his craft, now-teenage Sammy is making complex, elaborate films. As a Boy Scout, Sammy figures he can earn his photography badges through making films and enlists his entire troop in his projects. He also captures on film a family camping trip, one that inexplicably includes Bennie. It is through all these films that Sammy discovers how powerful film can be. More than just showing the things that are happening, Sammy realizes he can manipulate how audiences perceive what they are seeing and also that film can also capture things that weren’t intended to be seen. This is all classic Spielberg and, yes, we are being manipulated by him.

One more promotion for Burt, and the family is once again on the move, this time to Northern California…this time without third-wheel best-friend Bennie. Here, we get a couple more fables in the form of Sammy dealing with being bullied at school for being a Jew, Sammy navigating his first romantic relationship with a devout Christian, and Sammy grappling with his parent’s relationship falling apart. That’s a lot of crap for a seventeen-year old to deal with and he finds his way through it all with film.

All of these small stories (and a couple others) add up to a solid narrative explaining why Spielberg is the way he is. At no point does the film ever feel trite or that Spielberg is indulging himself, rather that Spielberg keeps the perspective that he’s trying to entertain an audience. The story flows quite nicely, there are heroes and villains, and we feel for Sammy throughout his childhood. I also quite enjoyed LaBelle’s performance, who really sells us on every emotion Sammy experiences. Plus, there are a couple of scene stealing moments from supporting roles in Judd Hirsch (Sammy’s uncle) and the Christian girlfriend (Chloe East).

If I was going to pick one director who could pull off making a movie about them self, I’d pick Spielberg. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t skeptical going into The Fabelmans because how could I not be? It’s blatant narcissism. But nobody is better than Spielberg at crafting a story and he proved it again with The Fabelmans. I even would have been okay if he showed young Sammy with that video camera tucked into a holster on his belt.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back, which is what we expect from Spielberg.