GOOD FORTUNE

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film starts with an angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) doing his job, which is just to stop people from getting into accidents from texting and driving. One of the people he helps is a man named Arj (Aziz Ansari), who is ready to give up on life after missing out on another job opportunity.

Arj struggles to make a living, taking odd jobs off an app called TaskSergeant and doing things like being paid to wait in line for novelty cinnamon buns. His main job is at a home improvement store called Hardware Heaven, where he sparks up a friendship with a coworker, Elena (Keke Palmer), who is focused on workers’ rights. They later go out for tacos, where Arj talks about how he does editing on documentaries. From up above, Gabriel watches with astonishment as Arj and Elena sit together. Arj later goes to an empty parking lot to sleep in his car after talking to his dad and pretending he is doing alright since his dad keeps boasting about Arj’s brother’s accomplishments.

Gabriel meets with other angels, led by Martha (Sandra Oh). He feels down on himself for not being seen as important as the other angels, like Azrael (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who guides lost souls. Gabriel also has much smaller wings as a result of his low ranking. He tries to talk to Martha about possibly getting a promotion, but she tells him to take things one step at a time.

Arj gets a new job going to work for Jeff (Seth Rogen), a millionaire tech bro whom Arj recognizes because he got cinnamon buns from the shop without having to wait in line. Arj cleans up Jeff’s garage while he goes to do his cold plunge routine. Jeff is impressed by Arj’s work and eventually has him become his assistant, and even gives him a company credit card.

Elena gets into an incident that causes her to reschedule a date with Arj. Jeff helps him dress himself up and recommends a fancy restaurant to take her to. Arj and Elena have a nice dinner, but the bill ends up at over $300, and Arj uses the company credit card to pay for dinner. When Jeff finds out about it, he confronts Arj and lets him go.

Arj later donates plasma to make some money and ends up falling asleep at a Denny’s. When he is woken up by an employee, he finds that his car has been towed due to unpaid parking tickets. To top it all off, Arj’s TaskSergeant account is terminated due to inactivity and a surplus of users. Arj is then met by Gabriel, who reveals himself as an angel to him. He proves it by showing Arj how his life will eventually turn out – he gets a job as a delivery driver for an Amazon-like company where he needs a “pee bottle” due to strict deadlines. He and Elena move in with her mom and have to deal with her sister’s obnoxious boyfriend. They eventually make enough to move to Texas, where they have a dog and have to put him down because they don’t have money for his surgery. Arj thinks that he is only going to look forward to more misery and wishes he had a life like Jeff’s. Gabriel opts to show him that the rich life is not all it’s cracked up to be, and he touches Arj’s shoulder.

Arj wakes up in a nicer car in the same parking lot where he fell asleep, only this time, the security guard that kicked him out is now more polite to him. He returns to Jeff’s house, which is actually now his house, and Jeff is his assistant. Gabriel quickly assumes that Arj sees that Jeff’s life isn’t as great as he expected, except he’s wrong and Arj loves being rich since he can throw money at all of his problems now. However, since Arj lives a different life now, he has to reintroduce himself to Elena. He takes her back to the fancy restaurant, where they eat even more food and make such a good impression on the waitress that the restaurant comps their meal. As a result of Gabriel meddling with a human that he shouldn’t have (he was supposed to help Elena, not Arj), Martha removes Gabriel’s wings.

Arj throws a party, where Gabriel is now visible to others but with some limited powers. He still tries to convince Arj to switch back to his old life, but Arj refuses. Gabriel then tries to use his powers on Jeff, who is cleaning up at the party, but this causes Jeff’s memories to come back all at once and sends him into such a shock that he passes out and freaks all the other partygoers out. Jeff learns about the switch and demands that Arj give him his life back, but Arj tells him to tough it out after he got fired over the $300 dinner charge. Arj ultimately agrees to go back to his normal life after spending the rest of the week enjoying the high life. Since Gabriel also has nowhere to go, he ends up crashing with Jeff.

Jeff is told by the motel manager that he has until the end of the day to come up with money or he has to leave. He takes on jobs through TaskSergeant but finds out he won’t get paid until the end of the week.

Arj invites Elena to go to Paris with him for the weekend before he gives up his new life, but she is focused on organizing a union at the store. Arj seems dismissive of her work, so she chooses to no longer continue the relationship. Arj later texts while driving and gets into a car accident.

Jeff and Gabriel learn that Arj is in a coma, with an estimated two weeks before he wakes up. Gabriel ends up fired by Martha for his failure to get Arj to switch back, and she renders him mortal. He starts to take on a part-time job as well, where he discovers how others, like his manager at a Korean restaurant, Felipe (Felipe Garcia Martinez), has to work three jobs just to support himself and his family. However, Gabriel also starts to enjoy other aspects of humanity, such as eating junk food (he particularly loves “chicken nuggies”).

Arj wakes up from his coma, where he learns from his nurse that Jeff and Gabriel have been going around asking about him. Arj then pretends to have suffered memory loss when Jeff goes to his house to deliver food, and he acts like he doesn’t remember Jeff. Complicating things for Jeff is that he loses his job as a delivery driver since the company is now switching to robot deliveries. His plan to get a job at his old company by sharing insider secrets doesn’t work since they think he hacked their files. Jeff’s final solution is to sneak into Arj’s house and steal some old watches that Jeff owned which are words hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At Hardware Heaven, Elena is giving a rousing speech to her coworkers about forming a union when one of the men at the job dismisses unions, saying they only take money without actually doing anything different. Gabriel walks in and tries to join the speech, only he gets kicked out for wandering into the break room and not actually working there. Ultimately, the union does not go through due an overwhelming number of negative votes. Meanwhile, Gabriel has a heart-to-heart with Felipe and joins him and his wife (who is actually one of the people Gabriel saved from texting and driving) at a salsa nightclub.

Arj throws a party that was supposed to be Jeff’s big birthday celebration. He and Gabriel go to the house but wait out until the security guards have left their post. During the party, Arj sees Elena has taken another shift as a caterer. When the party is over, they talk and she says that being rich isn’t important to her, but rather looking out for other workers.

Once the coast is clear, Jeff makes his play for the watches. He succeeds in getting them, but gets shot in the arm by Arj, since Jeff let him know where he kept his gun before they switched lives. This also causes Arj to slip that he was faking his memory loss since he didn’t want to switch back to his life. At the hospital, Arj sees that things have gone too far and he agrees to finally switch back, until Gabriel tells him that it won’t work unless Arj REALLY wants to go back (which he does not).

Arj invites Jeff and Gabriel to crash with him until things are worked out. Martha visits Gabriel, who admits that he wished he could have done more than what he was assigned to do, but she tells him that people can inspire hope in each other.

The guys go out for tacos at the spot where Arj and Elena went on their first date. They even run into Elena and some coworkers there, and Gabriel suggests they all go to the salsa club. While they are all having fun, Arj notices Gabriel is bummed out. They go outside and talk, where Gabriel expresses his regrets over putting Jeff into a bad life. Arj admits that he is scared of going back to a life filled with struggle and feeling unfulfilled, but Gabriel tells him about what he has enjoyed from being human and the people he has met, regardless of the bad that comes with it. Arj takes these words in and finally decides it’s time to go back.

Arj and Jeff wake up in their old lives again. Arj talks to his dad and comes clean about how he is struggling, while his dad admits that Arj’s brother is in trouble for tax evasion (something that makes Arj happy). When Arj goes to pick up his car, he discovers that Jeff paid off his impound fees. At his company, Jeff also orders that the robot delivery drivers by removed and that actual drivers be paid living wages. Arj goes on to live the life that Gabriel showed him, only with some minor differences. Arj inspires the other delivery drivers to quit and leave their piss bottles, while he and Elena are shown having a pleasant dinner with her mom and his dad. Arj also begins working on a new documentary about the gig economy. He and Elena go out and get tacos again, but Arj leaves one on a plate before leaving. Gabriel’s invisible hand then grabs the taco.

Arj is down on his luck and struggling to make money. He is met by Gabriel, a guardian angel who specializes in preventing texting-and-driving related accidents. When Gabriel shows Arj that his life is only going to encounter more struggles, Arj wishes to live a life like Jeff, a wealthy tech bro that Arj was working for as an assistant until Jeff fired him for using the company credit card to pay for an expensive dinner date. Gabriel says that Jeff's life is not all it's cracked up to be, but Arj doesn't care and wants to switch lives anyway.

While Arj enjoys being rich, Jeff sees how bad Arj had it when he has a hard time finding money and is living out of his car. Meanwhile, Gabriel is stripped of his wings by his angel boss Martha and forced to live as a human. Although Gabriel sees how much humans have to struggle to get by, he does enjoy other bits of humanity, like eating, dancing, and overall enjoyment of other people's company. Arj also tries to form a relationship with his former coworker Elena, who is focused on securing workers rights for her fellow employees, but ends up failing to form a union.

Arj gets into a coma, which derails the plan to switch lives again after a week. He pretends to have memory loss to keep Jeff off his back. Jeff plans to steal some watches of his from Arj's house to sell them, but Arj shoots him thinking he's an intruder. At the hospital, Arj realizes things have gone too far and agrees to switch back, but Gabriel tells him he needs to actually want to go back to his old life and not simply out of guilt or obligation.

Arj, Jeff, and Gabriel end up bonding until Arj and Gabriel have a heart-to-heart about life and being human. With that, Arj agrees to go back to his old life. Upon returning to his old life, Jeff pays for Arj's impound fees and starts to make changes at his company to benefit their employees. Arj starts a relationship with Elena and starts working on a new documentary. It is also implied Gabriel has regained his angel status.