At The Movies: Good Fortune is a lovable fantasy fable, no bouquet for wedding farce Bride Hard

Good Fortune (NC16)

98 minutes, opens on Oct 16
★★★★☆

The story: Keanu Reeves plays well-meaning guardian angel Gabriel, who swops the life of struggling odd-jobber Arj (Aziz Ansari) with that of a venture capitalist (Seth Rogen) for a week to show him money cannot solve problems. Except it does, and there is no way Arj will return to his former self.

American comic Ansari’s feature debut as writer, director and producer is like Trading Places (1983) with a divine intervention from It’s A Wonderful Life (1946).

Rogen co-stars in Good Fortune as pampered billionaire Jeff, whose luxurious Hollywood Hills mansion Arj is now enjoying.

A displaced Jeff is meanwhile reduced to living out of his car in Los Angeles.

Sharing his destitute makeshift digs is Gabriel, who has been demoted to Earth by his supervisor Martha (Sandra Oh) for creating the unwarranted existential chaos. His purview as a low-level angel was to stop drivers from texting. He gets a job to support Jeff and himself, washing dishes at an all-you-can-eat Korean restaurant.

“I was a celestial being,” he rues during a cigarette break. “And now I’m a chain smoker addicted to nicotine.”

Even when flanked by two professional funnymen, Reeves gets the biggest laughs for his deadpan solemnity. He is a hoot.

His Gabriel is an innocent of childlike sweetness in an endearingly absurd comedy very much of its time for its takedown of the gig economy, capitalist exploitation and the US’ class divide.

Jeff comes to understand the financial struggles of the other 99 per cent. Arj, on his part, finds self-worth and happiness with his union activist girlfriend (Keke Palmer). Even Gabriel learns invaluable lessons about human friendships, and the joys of dancing and cheeseburgers.

Hot take: This lovable fantasy fable, with its empathetic everyman problems, is a godsend.

Bride Hard (PG13)

105 minutes, opens on Oct 16
★★☆☆☆

The story: Armed mercenaries take a ritzy destination wedding hostage to gain access to a secret vault of gold bars, unaware maid of honour Sam (Rebel Wilson), codenamed Agent Butterfly, is a deadly superspy.

No bouquet for this American matrimonial farce.

Bride Hard is a shotgun wedding between the chick flick Bridesmaids (2011) that launched Wilson and the action spree Die Hard (1988), a concept already exhausted by the Jennifer Lopez-Josh Duhamel romantic comedy Shotgun Wedding (2022).

The plot is shoddy, the jokes are unfunny and the Australian comedienne makes for a screechy heroine, who flakes on her childhood best friend’s (Anna Camp) hen party in Paris with the three bridesmaids (Anna Chlumsky, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Gigi Zumbado) to bust an international terrorist ring.

Sam is always prioritising her covert missions. The girls feel they cannot trust her any more.

The mid-ceremony siege on the wealthy in-laws’ private island estate in Savannah, Georgia, is her chance to rebuild their sisterhood by killing the bad guys and saving everyone at the party. Curling tongs, an hors d’oeuvres platter, a rocket launcher and Wilson’s stunt double are freely deployed in the slapstick fights.

The director is British journeyman Simon West of Con Air (1997) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). He also has Sam and the handsome best man (Justin Hartley) nearly boiled alive in a whisky still.

There is finally a completely unnecessary hovercraft chase before the family mansion goes up in flames – a fitting metaphor, surely, for such a misfire.

Hot take: The ungrammatical title alone is ground for divorce.