Yes Man

I've just had the misfortune of watching Yes Man, and you can probably guess that I was really disappointed.

Synopsis

Carl is a bank clerk in charge of approving or denying loans most of which he denies. After separating from his wife, he has withdrawn into his shell and no longer enjoys the company of his friends. In short he's turned into a grumpy old man, that is until he runs into an old friend whilst he's eating his lunch. His friends tells him of a seminar that's coming up in a few days, which gas changed his life for the better.

The concept is simple, you can improve your life by saying 'yes'. And that's what Carl decides to do, but it's not as easy as it sounds, there are somethings you just want to say no to, the trouble is bad things happen when Carl says no.

Cast

Jim Carrey as Carl Allen
Zooey Deschanel as Allison
Bradley Cooper as Peter
John Michael Higgins as Nick
Rhys Darby as Norman
Danny Masterson as Rooney
Fionnula Flanagan as Tillie

My Thoughts

The basic idea for the film is a great one, although it seems very much a film along the lines of Liar, Liar. In this film he can't say no, in the other he couldn't lie, and both situations led to amusing consequences, or it did in Liar,Liar anyway, in this film someone forgot to tell the writers to add the jokes in.

I'm not a huge Jim Carrey fan, I liked Liar, Liar and Bruce Almighty, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he's a great actor. In this film he's particularly poor, although the script doesn't really give him a lot to work with. The problem with Carrey is that he has little in the way of natural acting ability, and when faced with a poor script like this he tends to rely on pulling stupid faces and flapping his arms around in order to get a few laughs.

What I find absolutely amazing is that the film was given a 12 rating. My son will be 12 in a couple of months, so I had no problem letting him watch it, after all Indiana Jones is rated 12 as well! But this should have been a 15 at least, there's lots of foul language, and not just the odd 'sh*t' every now and again, there's the F word thrown in a few times as well, but I suppose you can rationalise that by saying that kids hear it in the playground all the time (although I don't see why films should exacerbate the problem). The worse thing for me when I was sitting next to my 11 year old son was watching an OAP giving Carl a BJ, and taking her teeth out to do it. Seriously I didn't know where to put myself, it's not the sort of thing I expected my son to see (albeit mainly but not wholly inferred) at his age. I'm no prude, and we did chuckle later in the film at Carl riding a motorbike in a hospital gown, with his butt hanging out for the entire world to see, but the other scene was just too much.

Apart from that, it just wasn't funny, the premise of the film allows for a million laughs, but I think we managed about 3 or 4 chuckles between us, the script was just too weak, and the execution too poor. None of the cast really stood out for me, but if I had to pick the best of the bunch I'd actually choose Bradley Cooper, as he seemed to have a more varied repertoire than the others. The ending was totally predictable too.

DVD Extras

Gag Reel (series of outtakes and Jim Carrey acting the fool)
Down Time on the set of Yes Man
Jim Carrey Extreme Yes Man
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