I have gone on record many times with my love for Jim Carrey and that Dumb & Dumber is and will always be one of my all-time favorite comedies, and it’s with those two loves that I chose to sit down during the holiday season to check out Carrey’s return to what he does best: make people laugh.
Let’s be clear about this: I love funny Jim Carrey, the Carrey from Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty and even The Cable Guy and I do love serious Jim Carrey, the Carrey from Man on the Moon, The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and even the dark Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and while I don’t think Yes Man is on par with any of his other hilarious hits, it’s still a nice return for him to comedy.
The story is quite simple in that Carrey stars as “Carl Allen,” a mostly-negative loan officer who, after attending a self-help conference that preaches to say “Yes” to all opportunities and propositions, makes a covenant with the conference guru (played pretty well by Terrence Stamp) to say “yes” to everything that comes his way. Naturally, mild hilarity and silly situations ensue as he says “yes” to everything including giving a homeless guy all of his money (which leads him to the love interest, “Allison” played awkwardly, though that’s her usual character so it’s quite charming, by Zooey Deschanel), dressing up and attending a Harry Potter party, agreeing to be sexually pleased by his very old neighbor (which was a scene that totally should have been eliminated and was only left in to attract the PG-13 boys), which are all situations that eventually lead to good and positive changes in his life.
And that’s where, to me, the film loses its stamina. It’s almost like the writers didn’t know how to create the conflict, when everything goes his way by saying “yes” to everything, how do you introduce an antagonist if you’re trying to get the message across to be open to possibilities in your life? Well, unfortunately, you only have a couple of hours to accomplish character, story, conflict, resolution, and a climax, and the writers of Yes Man chose the last 25 minutes to introduce the conflict, resolve it, and lead you to the climax of the story. The ending all felt rushed and fake and I didn’t buy the tension that was created when Carl’s (Carrey) automatic agreeing to everything lead to questions of his authenticity in relationships and if he really was being honest or not. They should have started a natural progression of semi-negative consequences from his total “yes-ness” to everything instead of causing the movie to come to sudden halt and present us with a contrived conflict.
One of the things I liked seeing in this movie was Carrey’s age lines. He’s 46 years old and for the first time that I’ve seen in his movies, the man with the rubber face is actually showing signs of aging. I say it’s about time, it was to me a very realistic sign that he can’t do what he does forever. The days of beating the crap out of himself for a laugh are now going to be limited and the toll it takes will be visible. I think you see the beginnings of it in Yes Man. The comedy here is safe, it’s nothing that Carrey is not used to doing, but it’s also not comedy that will blow you away or affect the way you view Carrey. I think this is a safe return to physical and laugh-out-loud comedy for him and maybe it’ll help people forget when he tried VERY HARD to be hardcore and be taken for a twisted-horror-movie-actor with The Number 23. Jim Carrey flat out wants to make people laugh and I think it shows in every comedy he does. His energy is there and he is pretty much always funny (even in the crappy films), I think. I don’t think he needs to ONLY do comedies (Eternal Sunshine and Man on the Moon are 2 of my all-time Carrey favorites) and I don’t think he’s lost it at all.
Content Warning: Rated PG-13 for crude sexual humor, language and brief nudity. This movie could have been a PG family-friendly film with a message if not for the awkward geriatric “sexually pleasing” scene and an ending scene with old people’s butt’s. So, obviously, this film has a lot of geriatric nudity, I didn’t even think about that until afterwords.
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johnny thunders
i agree and disagree.
i think this is definitely his funniest film since liar, liar. i hated bruce almighty because they tried to hard to come up with more ace ventura like catch phrases.
the first 20 minutes of the movie is boring and terrible. but once it kicks in, it’s really great until the end.
also, not to be rude or anything, but do you know anything about typical three act structures? because the conflict came in at the time it always does in films, and was wrapped up the way it always is. you introduce the conflict and the end of the second act, bringing you into the third act where the character has to redeem himself. i only ask because your comments led me to believe you hadn’t noticed that in any other film before.
besides, i thought the conflict was totally believable. you don’t think she would wonder how genuine he was once she found out he had to say yes? i think that’s pretty reasonable.
also, this movie is a must watch for a fan of third eye blind, because the scene involving them is pretty freakin’ amazing.
January 2, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Dan
I guess I didn’t think much about the three act structure, nor have I really thought about it in the past, but even so, if it follows the traditional rules or not, I still felt like it was a rushed conflict/resolution.
I agree in that when she found out that the natural response would be to question his authenticity, but I wish that would have been a more gradual scene. All of a sudden the Department of Homeland Security takes over and it causes him to reveal what he’s been doing this whole time (not out of a malicious intent towards anyone, especially Allison), and she just all of a sudden doesn’t trust him nor allows him to explain why he was saying “yes.”
And yes, that was a genius inclusion of that song.
January 3, 2009 at 11:22 am
Donna
As my son knows, I am not a big fan of Jim Carrey (Dumb & Dumber..please..!!)but I would go to a movie of his if it looked interesting and this one did not to me. I guess I need to read more about it because the trailers make it look like a really boring movie. But I will agree that I like that they are making an actor look his years and not try to make him look younger!!
Has anyone seen Marley & Me? I saw it recently and really liked it!! But I haven’t seen any comments on it on the site.
January 6, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Monday Morning List Tilling the Soil
[...] Yes Man on [...]
April 20, 2009 at 9:06 am