I'm not sure we needed another movie about how turning 30 means waving bye-bye to all that twentysomething je ne sais quoi. But here's Everything's Gone Green, Paul Fox's winsome (and then some) account of turning 30 in Vancouver, which is like turning 30 anywhere else, only with better scenery.
Paulo Costanzo, late of Joey, plays Ryan, a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed slacker type who, in the movie's opening scenes, loses both his girlfriend and his job. The job is quickly replaced with another job, this time writing articles about people who've just won the lottery. And, having had enough of sleeping on futons, Paul allows himself to be seduced into a money-laundering scheme that would violate his principles if he'd ever gotten around to establishing any.
But just you wait, principles are on the way.
Lacking only a laugh track for full effect, Everything's Gone Green has the snappy dialogue of a mid-level sitcom, and Costanzo has already proven his way with a one-liner. But the script, written by Douglas Coupland, the guy who more or less invented Generation X, never snaps out of its snappiness. It's all Gen X tropes, as if Reality Bites came out only yesterday. And there's a deafening symbol crash when a dead whale washes ashore -- Moby-Dick for those who listen to Moby.
"Does anyone do anything real these days?" Ryan asks with a disturbing lack of ironic detachment. By this time, he's met Ming (Steph Song), a thirtysomething Asian-American beauty who may lead him out of the cubicle jungle and on the road to... wherever.
As they keep telling us in magazine trend-pieces, 30 is the new 20.
Everything's Gone Green opens Friday, Apr. 27 at Westgate.
