Yes Man

Click to enlargeYes! Christmas is over! People can now stop pretending they like each other and go back to stamping on each others nuts/flaps* (*delete as appropriate). That means only one thing fuckers: it’s a new year! A time of re-evaluation and re-birth. An introspective pissing competition in which society reflects on the year just gone by and looks to improve in the year ahead. What better way to do this than with some uplifting celluloid magic based on the true story and novel by Danny Wallace, The Yes Man.

Carl Allen (Jim Carrey) is a ‘no’ man and going nowhere. A random encounter with an old acquaintance one day encourages Carl to attend a self-help seminar urging its followers to say “yes” to everything. Carl’s new found positivity starts to work wonders, he finds success at work, gets a girlfriend (Zooey Deschanel) and realises life doesn’t have to be such a knobbly old mess of graft and tedium. Cue hilarity!

Erm, well kind of. Directed by Peyton Reed, who did the spurt-inducing but shit cheerleading wank-fest Bring It On, and The Break Up with the fat-faced, bug-eyed funny man Vince Vaughn, Yes Man has quite a low-key feel to it giving the whole thing some much-needed plausibility. There are some excellent sets pieces and some genuinely hilarious laugh-out-loud moments that help to keep the film going. The undoubted star of the film however, is Norm, Carl’s gormless boss, played by Rhys Darby from Flight Of The Conchords. Eye-candy duties are handled by hot bit-part actress Molly Sims (The Benchwarmers, Starsky and Hutch) and the fucking awesome Zooey Deschanel (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Elf) . I don’t know what it is about kooky girls, but they just make me wanna touch myself in the bathing-suit area. And Deschanel is Queen of the Kook!Click to enlarge

Now, I don’t care what any of you judgemental pricks think, I fucking love Jim Carrey! He’s not for everyone, granted, but with films like Ace Ventura, Dumb & Dumber, The Truman Show, Man On The Moon and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, he’s made some fucking great films. This one is pitched squarely in the middle ground. Yes Man isn’t quirky enough to put in the Eternal Sunshine column and isn’t slapstick enough to group with Liar Liar. I don’t know if it’s just me; I am a miserable old fuck after all, but far from inspiring me to do more with my life, these types of films always remind me of how little I’ve actually done. Yes Man isn’t as profound as I hoped it would be but it’s funny enough to pass 104 minutes. Inevitably, it all ends in a Hollywood soup of clichéd plot twists and conflict resolution that, despite Yes Man’s uplifting philosophy, ultimately make this film just a time filler. But if you’ve got the time and don’t have to pay for your cinema tickets, then it’s worth a poke.

I'd say "yes" to Zooey Deschanel anyday out of 5.