Keanu Reeves plays the angel Gabriel and Sandra Oh is Martha in "Good Fortune."

God bless Keanu Reeves.

Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut, the comedy “Good Fortune” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Oct. 17) would have been just fine as a lively two-hander with Ansari and Seth Rogen that acts as a funny, often insightful exploration of the modern gig economy. It’s Reeves, though, who literally comes down from heaven (actually, more often a rooftop) to be the supernatural presence the movie needs to be something special.

Arj (Ansari) is a financially strapped LA guy who lives out of his car and works multiple jobs. Sometimes he’s at a hardware store, where he befriends the union-touting Elena (Keke Palmer), and other times he takes jobs as a hired hand for people through an app that's like Uber, but for random tasks. After Arj cleans his storage closet, rich tech bro Jeff (Rogen) hires him as an assistant, but not even a week later he fires him after Arj takes Elena for a date using Jeff's “company” credit card.

After this latest failure, Arj is depressed and at his wit’s end. That’s when Gabriel (Reeves) appears. A mid-tier guardian angel who mainly keeps people from texting and driving, Gabriel wants to do more. He offers to show Arj the pitfalls of wealth by swapping lives with Jeff’s, but it causes more chaos than Gabriel expects.

Arj thinks putting discos in your house and having all the money in the world is a pretty sweet way to exist, while Jeff is forced to live an unstable life. To make matters worse, Gabriel’s boss Martha (Sandra Oh) takes his wings – aka fires him – and Gabriel becomes Jeff’s mortal roommate while they try to get Arj to put everything back to normal.

“Good Fortune” is akin to the best of Ansari’s episodes from his Netflix series “Master of None,” in which he was able to nimbly toe the line between hilarity and gravity and explore deep themes in a humorous way to make them accessible. Financial inequality and the widening gap between the haves and have-nots are big issues for a broad comedy to tackle, but scenes like Arj waiting in line for hours to pick up a rich guy's gourmet donut puts those things into an entertaining perspective.

So that part works, and then Ansari includes a whole other subplot that could easily be its own movie as Gabriel learns what it’s like to be human. While the angel gets a little jaded having to work a kitchen job and develops a smoking habit, there are moments of sheer joy as Gabriel hits a dance floor and bites into a juicy burger for the first time. Reeves delivers on all phases of his character arc, making a potentially dull and earnest character soar.

The worst thing you can say about “Good Fortune” is there’s not enough of him in it. (Honestly, you could say that about a lot of his movies – you can never have enough Keanu.) Arj gets most of the character development, though Rogen, Reeves and especially Palmer’s roles could be fleshed out a smidge more. But everybody works well together. Rogen’s chemistry with Ansari and Reeves lets him evolve Jeff from a lunkheaded, well-to-do dude to a guy who begins to understand the plight of the everyman. Each of the characters are extremely different, yet Ansari successfully drives home the point that empathy is what connects us all.

Whether you dig its social satire elements or the nifty spin on the helper-angel movie, or you just want to see Reeves not shoot people in the head for a change, Ansari fortunately has crafted a mature comedy that gives audiences a chance to both laugh and think.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Keanu Reeves is angelic in Aziz Ansari's heaven-sent comedy 'Good Fortune'

Reporting by Brian Truitt, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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