Worst. Person. Ever.
Down-on-his-luck Raymond Gunt fancies himself a Jason Bourne type, although he is basically a contemptuous, lustful, self-centered arse. He may, in fact, be the worst person ever, although he certainly has lots of competition. Raymond’s luck appears to be improving when he is hired on as a cameraman shooting young lovelies in a Survivor-like TV show on the Pacific island of Kiribati. The catch is that he will be working for Americans (so it’s bound to be shit), and Kiribati turns out to be anything but a tropical paradise. Ray never gets a break: his flight is horrible; he gets detained by security; he suffers extreme reactions to macadamia nuts; he eats bugs; he gets banished from the island. He’s even blamed for an escalating nuclear crisis. He’d almost be sympathetic if he wasn’t the worst person ever. Comically satirical in his depiction of the blistering superficiality and inanity of modern pop culture, Coupland (Generation X, 1991) here wallows in the carnivalesque as he indulges in gross-out humor and his characters’ bad behavior, but, unfortunately, it all comes off as misanthropic and unpleasant. --Ben Segedin