Yes Man

2008 comedy

Rating: 10/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: Carl's struggling. His wife Stephanie has left him after less than a year, and he's bored with his job. He spends most of his time avoiding phone calls from his best friends and watching movies like some loser. But that all changes after he meets self-help guru Terence Stamp and decides to force himself to say "Yes" to every offer, every opportunity, every situation, every request, and every plea for help, thus becoming a "Yes Man" and giving the movie its stupid title.

There are times when I think Jim Carrey is a really good actor, and I'm glad I'm watching a Jim Carrey movie. This wasn't one of those times. See the poster? When I try to remember this movie in a month (I won't, by the way), I'm going to remember it as nearly two hours of watching Jim Carrey do exactly what he's doing on the poster. My memory of this movie will then by more gayer than my memories of The Sound of Music and The Music Man combined, and that is an enormous amount of gay. A staggering amount of gay! There are some good moments. Terence Stamp (Zod!) is in this playing a guy named Terrence. And I like almost all of the scenes that Rhys Darby (Flight of the Concords manager, a series of commercials that are obviously very effective since I can almost remember what they're for) is in. That guy's a hoot, and luckily, he's in this quite a bit. My guess is that his role was supposed to be a minor one, but the filmmakers sensed comedy gold and decided to give him more to do. There are just too many unfortunate moments in this. Carl is a really inconsistent character and Carrey plays him awkwardly, and a scene involving an elderly woman and fellatio is more disturbing than it is humorous. I did think Zooey Deschanel's band was humorous, and Jen had to explain to me what the great band name, Munchausen by Proxy, even meant. I'm a sucker for bands that wear sea creatures for hats.