The Prestidigitator

http://imdb.com/title/tt0461946/

It’s like one day you have a decent set of friends and suddenly they all get exec jobs, get married, have kids and vanish…and your life is like that old science fiction movie…

I love films that probe alienation and disillusionment of people in their twenties; probably because it’s easier to relate to or maybe just because these films seem a bit more profound and poignant than the usual escapist fluff.

Everything’s Gone Green is a look at the toll capitalism has taken on young people working nine to five jobs and how the prospect of easy money can make them (us?) take morally questionable turns. Ryan (Paulo Costanza) gets fired from his job for writing poems about how much he hates his work and just as he’s clearing out, he gets a phone call from his parents saying they won the lottery. A series of comic vignettes ensue and Ryan begins to marvel at how many people around him are involved in some kind of scam or the other ranging from dodgy pyramid schemes to Marijuana harvesting.

Everyone’s in a scam or creating something nobody really needs to sell to people who’re too stupid to care or notice. Whatever happened to being just real? Why aren’t we content being just middle class?

Naturally, Ryan gets enticed by the prospect of making easy money and gets embroiled in a scam of another sort; selling winning lottery numbers to the Japanese mafia. And as in most cases, there is a girl (and a very pretty one at that; Steph Song) involved as well.

I really enjoyed the film in spite of it not having a plot per se or a satisfying conclusion. The character never attains that epiphany that is so common to films of this genre. The script is extremely witty and it does have a couple of tender moments; like people crowding to see a beached whale just to feel something. The editing is slick and for a small movie like this, the visuals are brilliant.

At the end of the day, this is a smart slacker comedy that may not quite attain a cult status, but is still very well worth watching. 8/10