Still slacking

>> Douglas Coupland’s first screenplay
Everything’s Gone Green is charming but familiar

by MATTHEW HAYS

On first viewing, Everything’s Gone Green appears to be one of those movies that’s posturing itself as cool and hip. But as the movie sinks in, you realize it’s also inspired a strange sense of nostalgia. This is, after all, a film about a slacker who loses his job at the very point his father does, also loses his hyper-ambitious girlfriend and proceeds to try and figure out precisely what the term “growing up” means. And it’s been 16 years since Coupland wrote the landmark Generation X, supplying scads of journalists with ways to refer to (yet) another generation considered lost, as well as some superb catchphrases.

The film is pure Douglas Coupland, and I confess to feeling somewhat steeped in his universe, having also just recently watched the documentary based on his book of the same name, Souvenir of Canada. Everything’s Gone Green is Coupland’s first screenplay, and it almost feels as though he’s attempting gentle self-parody while also offering up his stable of Vancouverite characters. Paulo Costanzo is fine in the lead, playing the protagonist slacker dude. After losing his job, he takes up Mandarin classes (where he meets a cute girl) and begins some ethically-questionable wheeling-and-dealing with the insider info he gains as a result of his new gig, working at BC Lotteries.

His money-making side gig involves elaborate cash-laundering of lottery winnings for foreigners. Cutting ethical corners, he learns along the way, can shape the person that you are.

There are some funny moments and biting dialogue in Everything’s Gone Green, in particular a hilarious subplot in which Costanzo’s parents learn to make a living by growing dope. But the film also suffers from a nagging inconsistency in pacing; there are too many long, slow points in between an odd funny line or quirky moment.

Coupland fans will appreciate his considerable charms, and those who know Vancouver will appreciate how the city becomes another character in this movie. But the pleasing sense of nostalgia generated by Green is soon supplanted by an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu—indeed, we have seen slacker characters in identity-crisis movies before.

Everything’s Gone Green opens this Friday, May 11

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