Ryan, a good-natured slacker, is tempted into a money laundering scheme while working for a lottery magazine.
Review
I saw the unrated dvd version of this film that was released in August 2007, and it was very anticipated having followed its progress since being first told about the film via GMWMB back in 2005. The film won three awards from the various festivals where it played during 2006 and only seemed to have a very limited theatrical release that was also limited to only a few areas of North America.
It was Douglas Coupland's first cinematic screenplay, and I admit I wasn't overly familiar with his previous books, although aware of them for being cultural icons. Much was made of Coupland's involvement in this film and its location being proudly set in Vancouver, rather than being filmed in Vancouver and pretending to be another city.
The film itself was the sort of independent film I often enjoy, the characters - especially Ryan as the lead, was likeable in that down on his luck way. I really enjoyed the performances of his parents however who for me stole the movie. The film looked great, and more annoyingly but in a good way, the music was very cool - and I have to admit that the music stayed in my head a good while after seeing the movie! But saying all this, overall, I was a little disappointed with the film and for reasons that are probably obvious if you note the title of this website.
Gordon Woolvett had a great character in this movie, and it was a really cool role (not so sure about the costuming but I'll let that slide for now), in the films commentary the director notes how he wanted Gordon for the role after seeing him play Spit in Clutch, and seeing similarities to that character in Spike. This is why I wanted to see this movie, I adored Spit and I really was hoping to see a return, and its fair to say for the first couple of scenes it felt like Spit had been reincarnated. To be fair, Spike is not Spit, there are differences but the essence was there and I was enjoying his role until the moment the character just seemed to disappear off the face of the film, never to return.
This was disappointing for a number of reasons. Had the character actually run his course and there was no reason for his return, then that would have been fine but his disappearance from proceedings just served to confuse, because the plot still continued along the one Spike had set up (with the parents, drugs and his business) but when everything went to pot (excuse the pun...) Spike was nowhere to be seen, not even to face up to obvious blame for the parents troubles, and no explanation was given as to why, it was as if his character had never existed in the film.
So for this reason, and solely this reason I was disappointed that this film seemed to forget a pretty important plot thread, and while I still enjoyed the movie, and it was enjoyable and in parts insanely amusing, I was left with too many questions and even checked my dvd for any extra deleted scenes that might explain why a whole chunk of the story seemed to go untold.
What happened to Spike?
That's all I want to know.