This past weekend, Maria and I watched Yes Man, a film which we normally wouldn’t have rented if it were not free from the library. I’m going to summarize my thoughts on this film in three paragraphs. I think that’s all it will take. This paragraph does not count.
Yes Man is a predictable cookie-cutter romantic comedy. Jim Carrey plays a character who’s recently divorced but still not entirely over his ex-wife—who left him—and needs his life to be shaken up in order to get on with things. He receives that shaking when he bumps into an old friend who suggests and Carrey join him at a seminar about become a “Yes Man!” living by the philosophy of saying “Yes!” to everything. As you can predict, the results are at times hilarious and tragic.
Yes Man is the kind of movie you should see if you need something to see and have seen everything else there is to see. It’s funny. We laughed. But we could also predict every single twist and turn in the movie with the kind of precision usually reserved for the people who create synthetic DNA. Carrey is an absolute master of physical comedy and he is well-cast as Carl Allen, the mid-level banker. Rhys Darby, who plays Murray on Flight of the Conchords, reprises nearly that exact same role as Norman, Carl’s boss. Darby’s character is hilarious and the chemistry between these two is pretty electric—I’d like to see them do more together.
I don’t fault this film for being predictable, that’s the nature of the genre, but this film does have a major stumbling block all things considered. Like Crazy Heart, Zooey Deschanel cast as Carrey’s love interest was an awful choice. He looks like he could be her father and for me, and Maria, the age gap was just too great to be believable. The love story, which is the root of the movie, was just too out there. It’s a deal breaker if you care about the plot. But, it’s a Jim Carrey film, so plot is secondary to having a good laugh. And we laughed.
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