Everything's Gone Green

A 29-year old slacker discovers his hidden obsession with making money in the Canadian low-budget Everything's Gone Green, a film by Paul Fox that has nothing to do with the physical environment, only the environment inhabited by our souls. Written by Canadian author of Generation X fame, Douglas Coupland, the film shows Vancouver, British Columbia as it was meant to be seen, not a stand-in for Los Angeles but as a vibrant multi-cultural city filled with exquisite parks, bays, and mountains. Coupland smartly attempts to have us appreciate the difference between things that are real and things that are made to look real but the film is undone by contrivances and ludicrous subplots such as parents growing pot in their basement, a boss allowing workers to gather around a computer to watch porn, and an office cruise from hell that give it the air of a bad television sitcom.

Ryan (Paulo Costanzo) is a 29-year old Technical Writer living with his girl friend Heather in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia. In one bad day, he loses his job, is kicked out of his girl friend's apartment, and discovers that his father has lost his job of twenty five years. To top that, he is called home only to find out that his parents were mistakenly convinced that they won the lottery. Soon Ryan is back on his feet, however, with a job working for the BC Lottery Board taking pictures and interviewing lottery winners for a supermarket throwaway magazine. Good fortune also surfaces the same day when his brother, a real-estate mogul, offers him a free condo in a high-rise overlooking English Bay.

After Ryan hears on the radio that a whale has beached on English Bay under the Burrard Bridge, he drives over to have a look, telling people around him that he went because he wanted to believe that magical things can happen in life. At the beach, he strikes up a conversation with Ming (Steph Song), a set dresser for a film studio whose job is to change Vancouver into a U.S. city such as Phoenix or Los Angeles to appeal to the American market. It is not long before Ming's boyfriend Bryce (JR Bourne), a sleazy scam operator, invites the gullible Ryan into playing golf with him and succeeds in convincing him to use the information he obtains from the Lottery Bureau to engage in a money laundering scheme involving the Japanese Yazuka. Ryan, contrary to the values he expressed earlier, discovers the drive to make money at whatever cost is more persuasive than he thought but it seems out of character and is unconvincing.

In the vein of formulaic romantic comedies, an on-again off-again love interest develops between Ryan and Ming but there is little chemistry between the two and when she dumps the corrupt Bryce, she is in no mood to take on another relationship with another ethically-challenged individual. Everything's Gone Green is a pleasant film with some good in jokes about leaky condos, lottery winners, and Hollywood productions with artificial palm trees, but ultimately it is too slight and too conventional to really hit its targets with much impact. Sadly, the sharp writing of Coupland, excellent performances from Canadian actors, and the visual delights of Vancouver do not add up to a totally winning combination.

I liked some of the characters, but our lead relied too heavily on a charming smile. I didn't care two whits about him. He makes bad choices and I really didn't care since he did not seem to either. He seemed rather unintelligent. There were a couple of moments that provided a chance at some human insight (the scene with the whale was interesting), but these are lost in the general malaise of the film. The love interest was acceptable and the other various characters were mildly interesting, but the plot meanders around too much and left me wanting at many points in the film. In the end, I wondered why I stayed so long.

There are some tepidly humorous moments, but ultimately I did not care. I cannot fathom rating the film higher. - 3 of 10

Shot in beautiful British Columbia, the low-budget Canadian import, "Everything's Gone Green," is not, as the title might suggest, yet another Al Gore environmental documentary, but rather a witty, incisive meditation on how we choose to define "success" in the modern world.

Ryan is a 29-year-old Vancouver resident whose life is going nowhere fast. In one day alone, he gets dumped by his girlfriend, is fired from his job and discovers that his family HASN'T won the million dollar jackpot that his father mistakenly believed they had. The one ray of sunshine to come out of all of this is that Ryan is offered a job working for the lottery commission, a position he only halfheartedly accepts, but one which eventually leads him to think long and hard about what it is he truly wants out of life.

When we first meet him, Ryan is a man deeply bored and unhappy with his life but utterly unsure of how to go about changing it. On the one hand, he dreads the prospect of devoting decades of his life to a tedious, unfulfilling job, yet, on the other, he finds himself yearning to join his boyhood chums already comfortably ensconced in the great middle class. Ryan must figure out if achieving financial success will require a total abandonment of youthful idealism or if there is some way to retain one's principles and still have all the material wealth he could possibly want. Indeed when he takes a good look at all the people around him - be they his slacker buddy, the yuppie boyfriend of the girl he's fallen for, the lottery winners he is forced to interview, or even his very own parents - he discovers that they have all found ways to make ends meet without having to work very hard at it. And what does it really matter if those folks have to break a law or two or indulge in some shady and immoral enterprise to get their hands on some cash? It's all part of the lure of Easy Money and the cult-like addiction that comes along with it. It's only when Ryan decides to get a little of his own in the same way that his real crisis of character begins.

Douglas Coupland has written a smart, thoughtful script that finds humor in the off-kilter incongruities of daily life: Ryan's being the sole occupant of an otherwise empty, multi-story skyscraper; his clean-cut, retirement-age parents being arrested for farming pot in the family basement; his love interest whose job as a movie set designer is to make Vancouver, Canada look like any part of the world other than Vancouver, Canada (in a very clever swipe at "runaway" American film-making). Director Paul Fox brings an offbeat sensibility to the material without overemphasizing the "quirkiness" factor, as so many other independent filmmakers are wont to do. The atmosphere is heightened to be sure, but he is also careful to keep the story and the comedy sufficiently grounded in the real world so we can more easily identify with the characters.

As Ryan, Paulo Costanzo may not have conventional movie-star looks but he has an openness and a regular-guy appeal that make him a compelling lead for this movie. He is matched by the lovely Steph Song as the girl who has made some compromises of her own in her lifetime but who has the intestinal fortitude and good sense to pull herself back from the abyss before she hurls right on over it. JR Bourne could easily have turned his amoral yuppie character into little more than a two-dimensional Waspy villain, but instead he makes him both sad and strangely likable at one and the same time. Finally, Susan Hogan and Tom Butler steal any number of scenes as Ryan's late-blooming, dope-growing parents.

Old-fashioned in its message and theme, yet utterly modern in its style and tone, "Everything's Gone Green" admonishes us in a lighthearted and playful way to heed that long-established warning that money can indeed not buy happiness. It's nice to be reminded of that every once in awhile.

Saw it at the TIFF. Loved it. Want the soundtrack... Don't know where to get it. During question period asked the director and cast if the pot seen in the movie was real. They declined to comment after the director went purple in the face. Whimsically funny, with dark undertones on west coast society, and the seemingly impossibility of getting ahead in the 9-5 world. This movie will most likely appeal to those who have struggled with the concept of selling out to make a buck.... Cheers. Still unable to find the soundtrack. Wonder if this gem will ever make it out to theatres in any substantial release. Pity its a Canadian film. They never seem to see the light of day unless its stamped by weird aliens making love to crashed cars.

This movie was remarkably funny and the actors are generally excellent. This falls into one of those "20-something angst movies" (Old Joy, etc). It's the universal theme of trying to figure out: 1) where you are now, 2) where you want to be, and 3) how to get there.

The editing was inspired and I loved much of the dialog. Not everything was perfect, some of the scenes could have been shot from a better angle, etc., but overall, it was pretty good.

The main thing I most liked about it was that it wasn't "consistent"; it oscillated between funny, sad, poignant, ridiculous, ironic and silly. It moved slow sometimes, then fast, sort of backwards, sideways and forward (two steps back, three steps forward). The whale scene was shot in a stylized, dreamy sort of way and if you've ever lived through a strange moment in your own life where time seems to not quite be real -- well, that's this scene.

There's a lot of "indie" elements and by American standards, it's not a big budget flick; it also (refreshingly) doesn't treat the viewer like a moron as so many American movies do.

It was messy and mundane. Lots of ludicrous moments; just like life and that's what made it interesting. If you've experienced working in a cubical city, known people who've fasted on the "Master Cleanse" diet, dealt with obsessively self-absorbed people, or seen the light at the end of the tunnel only to realize that the ethics may not be so good to get you there…you'll enjoy this movie.