It takes an unusual talent to capture the nuance of an entire culture. Writer Douglas Coupland seems to be that talent.

Vancouver, British Columbia, is one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It is also densely populated. I spend a great deal of time in Vancouver on business and have noticed that most any road you travel on during the week is packed with cars. However, this film has a sedated sort of pace about it. Traffic does not seem to be an issue. The laid back lifestyle of the locals is the main idea.

Ryan is a late-twenty-something who doesn’t seem to have much ambition. His girl friend dumps him, and kicks him out of the house. He also loses his job because someone found his poems, in which he describes his hatred for his boring work. On his last trip out of the office, his mother calls—breathlessly announcing that his father has won the lottery. The incident creates a chain of events that spark a greedy flame in Ryan.

Almost every character in Everything’s Gone Green is scamming for a bigger piece of the financial pie. Of course, as often happens in movieland, nobody is in a legitimate business—or, at the very least, they are doing illegitimate things under the radar. Ryan, of course, gets caught up in the game when he meets Bryce, the owner of a business that builds golf courses. At least, his company managed to build one golf course. He appears to spend the rest of his time laundering money for his Japanese mobster business associates.

Because Ryan works at the local lottery office, he is in a great position to help Bryce with his latest scam. Bryce convinces Ryan to supply him the names of the latest big winners of the B.C. lottery so his big-money friends in Japan can buy the tickets at inflated prices in order to launder their money into Canada. I don’t know why mobsters would think this is a good idea, but Ryan gets a piece of the action—so he agrees to it. This transforms a slacker into a felony hacker.

Surprisingly, everyone around him notices his new-found wealth. He hides it convincingly in a new Mustang convertible and nice clothes. Ryan is new to the scam business.

Ryan is not the only one with a scam. Bryce’s girlfriend Ming owns a company that tries to make Vancouver look like other cities around the world for movie studios. Of course, disguising Vancouver as other cities is sort of a scam in itself. Filming in Vancouver is cheaper due to lower wages, a favorable monetary exchange rate, and non-union help for many film related services. Delightfully, Everything’s Gone Green films Vancouver as-is.

Ryan’s parents also get involved in a pot-growing scam with Ryan’s friend Spike. Scams are everywhere. But the primary issue in Everything’s Gone Green is not the scams, or capitalism, or slackerism, but selfishness. Slacker or otherwise, selfishness is unfulfilling. Ryan, et al, say and do nothing outside themselves. They are pursuing their own ideals or happiness—whatever that is supposed to look like—and they question everything but their own motives.

As we might expect, though, Ryan begins to realize that the flashy car and fancy clothes do not suit him. Ming finds the film business excessively fake—plus, her mother thinks she is crazy to have all the phony body parts and plants around the house. It becomes obvious to both of them that unless they learn to live for others, they will find the constant search for selfhood just as empty as the pursuit of wealth.

The humor in Everything’s Gone Green is quintessentially Canadian. I am not sure I could define that quality of humor, but I recognize it. The writing and story are quite engaging, and director Paul Fox appears to revel in the same sort of deadpan irony-laden humor that Coupland—if one can be said to revel in an understated way.

Everything’s Gone Green is rated R for “for some language, sexual material and drug content.” The more that I write commentaries on MPAA ratings, the more I wonder what the rating system means. Maybe I am becoming calloused to language and so forth, but this film seems pretty tame. The strongest sexual content is a scene in which Ryan and chums talk to a gal on a web cam. There’s no question about what is going on, but nothing is shown. See what I mean? How do you rate that? The pot scenes are so ridiculous they become inert.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Mike attended a press screening of Everything’s Gone Green.