Everything's Gone Green

This film is about a young unemployed man getting tempted to help with money laundering.

The main character, Ryan, is developed well at first. However, towards the middle of the film, his portrayal becomes superficial and perfunctory. There is not enough self soul searching to make me convince that he really wants to quit the illegal business. The other characters in the film are shallow and fails to connect to me. The plot is rather plain, there is not much happening after the first 20 minutes apart from some scenes that are meant for a quick laugh. I find this film rather boring to watch. I had hopes for the film that it would be interesting, thrilling or thought provoking. The film leaves me rather dissatisfied.

While this film seems to set out to be kind of a life study / commentary on society, it seems to get rapped up in itself much like it's main character does. While I actually agree with the values & statements made, they aren't articulated very naturally. It almost sounds like it's lecturing the viewer, which would be OK if the film wasn't playing off of it being a life study / romantic comedy.

Overall the film as a "cute" vibe to it. The woman who plays Ming is easy on the eyes as well. It does however feel like a low-budget movie & some of the editing seems off. Still it passes as entertaining to watch even if you don't really come away with anything at the end.

Why do good, solid movies like this get made then completely disappear, while totally stupid U.S. comedies full of jokes based on farting and puking and big mammaries play in the theatres for months, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars? Big promotional dollars and control of screens, nothing more.

This is witty and charming. It has terrific minor characters - the slightly nutty boss, the father who dresses like a gardener but speaks with the patter of a drug lord, the sweet little grandma who keeps a big kitchen knife close at hand to take on the home invaders she expects whenever the doorbell ring. And there is a really heart-warming love story (awww!). All against the scenic backdrop of Vancouver.

You will enjoy it thoroughly.

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.

What a pleasure to watch a Canadian movie that's not embarrassingly low budget and poorly acted. I am sure it was low budget, but if so, it was effectively done. I don't see what a bigger budget could have added. It was well-acted, especially by Paulo Costanzo. His performance was understated and very natural.

I love that (metro) Vancouver is so proudly and unabashedly itself here, in all its multifaceted glory, from the run-down houses of Strathcona to the posh golf course of Lion's Bay, with the gorgeous mountains of Howe Sound receding into the distance. For once, Vancouver did not play a stand-in for some other city, a common practice which features in the storyline.

What a funny, charming, and visually appealing film, a breath of fresh air in many ways. I hope to see more from the both the film-maker and lead actor!