*/****
starring Paulo Costanzo, Steph Song, JR Bourne, Gordon Michael Woovett
screenplay by Douglas Coupland
directed by Paul Fox
by Bill Chambers After popularizing the term "Generation X" with the title of his debut novel, Douglas Coupland staked a claim in the chick-lit-for-guys genre, his publishers no doubt hoping that zeitgeist lightning would strike twice. If anything, Everything's Gone Green, Coupland's first foray into screenwriting, makes him seem like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, still courting the teenage and twentysomething idealists because even though he gets older, they stay the same receptive age. Here we learn that Vancouver has sold out to its Hollywood North image, that the slow metabolism of the cubicle world discourages office drones from trying to climb the corporate ladder, and that money is poison–messages, all, that are at best disingenuous and at worst unseemly coming from a famous author now plying his trade in the film industry. The movie doesn't empathize with slackers–who'll be drawn to it like moths to a flame–so much as it offers them the seductive illusion of empathy, televangelist-style. (There's a pot subplot for good measure.) Leads Paulo Costanzo (late of TV's "Joey") and Steph Song are charming enough, but they're treading water; at the very least, Coupland would need the luxury of prose to vindicate this material. PROGRAMME: Canada First!
