Zooey Deschanel as Allison and Jim Carrey as
Carl in "Yes Man", Peyton Reed's romantic comedy, which opened today across the
U.S. and Canada. The film is distributed by Warner Brothers. (Photo:
Warner Brothers)
THE POPCORN REEL FILM REVIEW/"Yes Man"
The Joys And Mishaps Of Accentuating The
Affirmative . . . All The Time
By
Omar P.L. Moore/December 19, 2008
Peyton Reed's "Yes Man" is a comedy that poses some funny scenarios when one is
asked to accentuate the affirmative all the time, and while there are about a
dozen laughs in Mr. Reed's film, Jim Carrey's latest foray back into comedy is
an energetic but mostly lackluster and empty affair, with semblances of the
premise of one of his biggest live action comedy hits, "Liar Liar" duplicated
here. In that film Mr. Carrey's character was a chronic liar whose son's
birthday wish was that his dad couldn't tell a lie. Mr. Carrey then spent
the rest of the film telling the brutal truth. Then it was hilarious.
Now? Not so much.
In "Yes Man", Los Angeles resident Carl Allen (Mr. Carrey) works at Brea Federal Savings And Loan as a loan
officer who has -- ala the parole officer who repeatedly rejects Morgan
Freeman's parole in "The Shawshank Redemption" -- repeatedly rejected loan
applicants. After being unceremoniously spotlighted at a "Yes" seminar by
a flamboyant self-help guru (Terence Stamp), Carl's world knows no bounds,
as he is soon saying yes to everything. If he says no to anything . . .
With this new found freedom, Carl's boss and wannabe best friend forever Norman
(Rhys Darby) and Carl's good friend Peter (Bradley Cooper) celebrate and Carl is up for
the task of doing things he ordinarily wouldn't do. "Yes Man" soon gets
stale, repetitive and predictable. The film overall isn't as funny as its
situations are, and Mr. Carrey flashes trademarks of his "The Cable Guy" role
and additional films in his repertoire. (That's a polite way of saying
that he mails in his performance.)
The biggest problem with "Yes Man" is
its main character. Carl is a blank slate to begin with -- we don't know
why he says no to everything. We can surmise that the negativity is born
either out of fear or a new found libertarianism. He has an ex-wife
Stephanie (Molly Sims) who
has obviously broken his heart or perhaps left him because of his "no"
nonsense. In a way, Carl is like a plastic sponge. We see him, we
know he hurts, we know he laughs, but nothing is felt or soaked up in the
experience of spending two hours with him -- nothing is felt by him or by
us as an audience as he meanders through life, in one incomprehensible or
disjointed episode after another, including a detention which is silly, coming
from left field. The experiences just trickle off his back. It's as
if the writers had nowhere else to go after Carl has said yes, and knew they had
to fill time after the predictability grew stale. Even the film's romance
angle, with Zooey Deschanel as Allison, a fitness fiend who rides motorbikes and trains
her class to exercise and take pictures at the same time, inspires little more
than a risible yawn.
Carl's coterie of friends also engage in hijinks, overloading the film with
multiple situations so that the members of the male supporting cast end up
mimicking Mr. Carrey's character or at least taking advantage of his situation.
The old adage of "too many cooks spoil the broth" is apt here, especially when
the broth has been long since spoiled. The supporting cast diversions
makes the film even more disparate and bloated than it needs to be. Mr.
Carrey doesn't "carry" "Yes Man", even though the film's title suggests that he
should, and accordingly he shouldn't be upstaged by fellow actors who have also
been saying yes throughout the film and getting almost as many laughs doing so.
Mr. Reed's film makes little sense, and though comedies need not be consistently
believable, a little coherence and continuity would have helped here.
(Interestingly enough, in one of his past films, "The Break-Up", Mr. Reed did
everything that his would-be romantic comedy required adding weight and drama to
the proceedings, where as in "Yes Man", that same opportunity goes begging.)
When material like "Yes Man" crosses a Hollywood studio's desk (in this case
Warner Brothers), you'd hope that they could have tinkered with the script to
make better use of Mr. Carrey's talents. Mr. Carrey is an at times
effective dramatic actor, and it would have been satisfying to see him be tested
the way he was in films like "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind", "Man On
The Moon" or better yet "The Truman Show". Instead here, easy street seduces him,
and he says "yes" to not taking enough of a chance as the talented
actor he is.
Since comedy comes from tragedy, complexity and a little depth would have helped
accentuate this oh-so shallow experience.
With: Fionnula Flanagan, John Michael Higgins, Danny Masterson, Sasha
Alexander, John Cothran, Jr., Vivian Bang and Luis Guzman.
"Yes Man" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for
crude sexual humor, language and brief nudity. "Yes Man" is written by
Nicholas Stoller and Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel, based on the book by Danny
Wallace. The film's running time is one hour and 44 minutes. The
film opened across the U.S. and Canada today.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights
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