A "Has Its Moments" Film In the Purest Sense

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2009)

Jim Carrey has had a rather rough run with his recent films. After raising the bar with the obscenely lovable Liar Liar and creating a perfect casual guy goes party mode in The Mask, it seems he's had a tough time living up to his 90's classics. While 2003's Bruce Almighty was a decent watch it just felt a little forced near the end. Then there was The Number 23, which was an all-time low for him as far as I'm concerned. Now he offers us Yes Man, with my thoughts from the trailer being that I though it would be mildly entertaining but not a return to glory. And this is pretty much exactly what the film was for me.
Carrey basically plays a man of reluctance and slight resentment in the film until he's finally persuaded to give a program a shot encouraging people to say "yes" to mostly everything. Carrey's first thoughts are that it's as bad as he thought, but then things finally start to go his way in-spite of a few suspicions. The rest of the film essentially plays out like a casual romantic comedy with him and his love interest doing what they want and hitting the usual speed bump near the end with words and a couple events smoothing things out at the end.
For me, this film had a bit of the "Bruce Almight syndrome" in that the first half to 3/4 of the film are where the highlights are at, but the rest of the film felt like it was becoming a little too forced and serious. There were a few good, humorous moments during the film but nothing that'll make you choke on your popcorn and soda. My main problem with this film and other comedies is that sometimes they take things too seriously or feel forced for certain sections. This was the case with Bruce Almighty during the second half and Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay felt like it was trying to push the "food for thought" aspect(s) a little too much. Yes Man is more or less in the same boat.
If you're a Jim Carrey fan like me, then this film might be worth a viewing, though I'd suggest waiting for it come out on DVD and renting it since I was only entertained so much. I did get a fair amount of chuckles and laughs and it did manage to keep a smile on my face for most of the runtime. However, during the last roughly thirty minutes it felt like it was trying to change its style, which just didn't work for me.