Chase reviews YES MAN

Yes Man ***

The concept is simple – if you are open minded, and say ‘yes’ to every opportunity that comes your way, the universe will make sure good things happen to you. That was the premise of Danny Wallace’s book, and it seems to have worked out well for him – his premise has granted him a bestselling novel and a major Hollywood movie, starring none other than Jim Carrey himself. But is it something you should say yes to?

Well it is a charming film, but it also has some major flaws. The main one being that it is a Hollywood movie. Wallace’s book was (reportedly) non-fiction, so there was interest in finding out whether this London layabout’s life would be changed. In Hollywoodland, however, things are different. Were we really expecting Jim Carrey not to end up with the girl and become a better person by the end of the film?

Carrey plays Carl, a bank worker who is stuck in a rut. He doesn’t do much except sit in and watch DVD’s (and we all know how bad that is, right) and can’t even be bothered to get off his ass to go to his best friend’s engagement party. A chance meeting (is there any other kind?) ends up with him at a self help seminar which encourages him to make the most of life and say yes more often. Carl reluctantly agrees to try this new outlook on life.

This new outlook on life allows Carl to meet the kooky Allison (Zooey Deschanel’s Allison is the definition of Hollywood kooky. She rides a moped. She sings in a prog rock band. She’s got crazy hair! Look up ‘kooky’ in the Hollywood dictionary, and Zooeys picture will be right there.), go bungy jumping, get really drunk, and learn Japanese. However, when Allison finds out about his experiment, she gets angry and doesn’t answer her phone. Not exactly the high stakes of an international thriller.

However, this isn’t actually the point of the movie. The point of the movie is so that Jim Carrey can convince the world that at 47, he is still the rubberfaced pratfaller we fell in love with in Dumb and Dumber. Some of his falls are terrific, but the sight of a 47 year old Carrey with his 20-something contemporaries, is a little disconcerting. Also the minute you see him in a hospital smock, you know there’s going to be a middle aged ass on your screen within ten minutes. But with no one on the scene to usurp him as clown in chief, he is still the person you want slipping on that banana peel.