Review of Yes Man (2008) by Chads. — 21 Dec 2008
"Yes Man" resembles former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, both movie and man like to bring up 9/11, regardless of time or place, regardless of the context. The FBI think they might be terrorists: Carl(Jim Carrey) and Allison(Zooey Deschanel) fly to Lincoln, are nabbed in Lincoln, bringing their Jack Kerouac-like adventure to a crashing halt, and in the process, crashing the film.
"Yes Man" isn't big enough for terrorism; it's just a modest romantic comedy about living life to the max, and more importantly, caving in to your impulses. The man who invites Carl to the seminar throws a brick into the bank's plate glass window.
Instead of making the allusion to terrorists being the ultimate yes men as an obstacle for the couple to overcome, the film should have eschewed the tackiness that comes along with dredging up the fallen towers, and showed how saying "yes" all the time, slowly becomes a hazard to Carl's life, and for those who orbit it.
"Yes Man" should have treated Carl's single-minded tendency to say "no", then "yes", as an outgrowth of OCD, or better still, manic-depression. Saying "yes" as a descent into madness, but that's too ambitious for a film like "Yes Man", whose populist sensibility makes allowances for Carl's period of answering in the negative, a result of his lingering feelings for the ex-wife.
The scene in which Carl overcaffeinates himself with Red Bull, hints at what a more ambitious "Yes Man" would look like.
This review of Yes Man (2008) was written by Chads. on 21 Dec 2008.
Yes Man has generally received positive reviews.
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