The Yes Men (2003)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

While I am more conservative than the leftist activists who made "The Yes Men Fix the World", I appreciated their nerve and style--plus the film made me think. These guys managed to infiltrate various meetings and pretended to be the most evil of capitalists all in an attempt to mock what they supposedly supported. Their anti-corporate and anti-globalist message provided a lot of punch, so while I didn't completely agree with their message, I loved the film and looked forward to seeing their previous film, "The Yes Men". Unfortunately, the film didn't even come close to meeting my expectations and really bored me. Most of the problem is that this documentary really looked amateurish and poorly constructed--like something done by teens that is designed to be posted to YouTube. Too often, the leading men looked way out of their element, ill-prepared and silly--and not in a good way. Additionally, many times throughout the film, I felt annoyed because it really, really needed editing. My feeling is that "The Yes Men" is a not yet ready for distribution project. My advice--see the sequel instead.

When I initially heard about this documentary, I thought that it would be, first and foremost, really funny. However, I felt that almost all of the humor in this movie falls as flat as their body suit prank did. If I was a member of this Yes Men group, one of the first goals would be to make an impact. With the pranks that were carried out, an impact was hardly made. Rather, the audiences were kind of lost with what the Yes Men were trying to convey. Were they joking around or kind of serious? Is their speech engaging at all or is it just a bore? Did their messages even make sense at all? I thought their first farce with the body suit was really bad and lost on everyone who viewed it. The second go with the recycled burgers was much better, but once the question and answer session began the Yes Men seemed very lost. I would think they could have thought on their feet a bit better than that. The final prank was alright again, but it seemed that with the spotlight that they were given, they really could have accomplished more. As for the documentary itself, I did not think it was put together very well. There was nothing creative about it. There was nothing added to this by it being a documentary rather than an hour long television show spotlighting what the group actually did.After I finished watching this and began reflecting upon what I just saw, I was really left wondering how much this group was really able to accomplish. It feels to me that the people who put this documentary together really tried to make it seem that the Yes Men made more of an impact than they really did.I definitely agree with what the Yes Men set out to accomplish, but I'm not sure if their story really deserved to be made into a feature length documentary.

I think the CONTENT of the documentary was probably valid but the QUALITY of the video was less than that of a home-made one. It was so poor that I could not continue to watch the video which I tried to do twice. And that really disappoints me because I'm very much interested in anything that blows the whistle on the arrogance of international organizations whose self-interested gains appear to be the only reason for their existence.Interestingly, this documentary appeared to be inspired by Michael Moore's work. I think the makers of this one need to be mentored by Moore for awhile yet.

I could hardly make it past the two of them patting each other on the back at length over their phony Bush website. The funniest thing about this movie is that these two were probably sobbing and crying over the 2004 election results. Have a little Wolfowitz for desert.It would seem that the jacket of the CD ought to have warned us that this wasn't really a comedy "with humor and outrageous antics" so much as a smug political statement of moral superiority by immature reprobates toadying up to the international left. Maybe they should have started with a protest of the mislabeling of their own film by the video outlet I rented it at (a major corporation).Not recommended. Anyone putting a dime into a rental fee on this one is probably supporting some group sacrificing American lives and jobs to preserve the habitat of a colony of slime mold somewhere in the ANWR.