After Down With Love and The Break-Up, director Peyton Reed completes a hat-trick of relatively smart, slightly off-beat variations on the standard mainstream romantic-comedy with Yes Man - which turns out to be sufficiently amusing and (despite an unexpected smattering of raunchy, adults-only gags) genial to overcome its somewhat gimmicky-sounding central premise.
   Inspired by British author/TV-personality Danny Wallace's non-fiction bestseller of the same title, the story has bank-employee everyman Carl Allen (Jim Carrey) trying to get out of his self-imposed rut by the simple expedient of saying "yes" to everything he's asked. This includes, in an unexpectedly topical touch, all of the aspiring borrowers who beat a path to his door - the success of these "micro-loans" being something which real-life financiers might well want to ponder given recent events. We've seen this kind of stuff - the self-centred chap who's forced to realise the error of his ways - countless times before, of course, especially at Christmas. And while it would be stretching things to call Yes Man an It's A Wonderful Life or Christmas Carol for a credit-crunched world, audiences in search of Yuletide escapism at their local multiplexes could certainly do much worse.
   In the book, the "say yes" decision was motivated essentially by Wallace's curiosity - combined with his nose for a commercially promising publishing-idea. In the film, the philosophy is tied up with the very "Californian" self-help seminars run by a charismatic new-agey type played - with great, gruff, deadpan gusto - by Terence Stamp. The latter is a lot of fun - even more so Flight of the Conchords' Rhys Darby as Carl's geekily ingratiating boss Norman. The Kiwi, looking eerily like a Harry Palmer-era Michael Caine, pretty much steals the show in a belated but notably promising big-screen debut (one presumes that Judd Apatow has already been in touch).
   Zooey Deschanel is the main love-interest, and though her kooky-quirky persona is approaching the verge of over-familiarity, she does have the requisite amount of chemistry with Carrey to (a) distract us from their 18-year age-gap and (b) keep the picture going in romantic as well as comic turns, her character's natural spontaneity fitting nicely with Carl's newly-acquired simulacrum of same.
   As for Carrey: well, in a way it's slightly disappointing and frustrating to see him at 46 and a full 14 years after Ace Ventura and The Mask, gurning away and throwing himself into the whole goofy verbal/physical comedy shtick. It seems that, no matter how much he tries to spread his wings (and seek "respectability") with riskier material like The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or last year's psychological chiller The Number 23, when Hollywood studios come knocking with their latest high-concept, big pay-day popcorn proposal, he really is the boy who "can't say no." At $10-$20m a pop, it's not such a terrible fix...

Neil Young
15.Dec.08

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USA
104m (BBFC timing)

director : Peyton Reed (Bring It On, Down With Love, The Break-Up.)
editor : Craig Alpert (Borat, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express.)

seen 15.Nov.08 Newcastle (Empire cinema : press show)