Yes it is a lot like Liar Liar, but it's Better

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2009)

Yes Man is a very hard film for me to review because it one of those films where the part of me that fancies myself a intellectual film critic tells me I should hate it, and the part of me that is just some suburbia kid that went to see a movie on Friday night tells me I should love it. The reason I'm suppose to hate it is because Hollywood has been beating the proverbial dead horse with films whose premise is almost identical to this one. Yes Man is a Romantic Comedy about a man who recently went through a divorce and is realizing his life is miserable, in order to change all that he makes an unusual, radical, and unrealistic change in his lifestyle that causes him to acquire a new girlfriend. If you can't name at least 5 Romantic Comedies that are carbon copies of that idea then you must live under a rock, Hell I can think of 3 that Jim Carey acted in before this one.
But there is nothing inherently wrong with these kinds of films, in fact some are very good, and if Yes Man is the last of this form of Romantic Comedies then the sub-genre has ended on a high note. There are several things that make Yes Man better than Liar Liar (which every critic on planet earth seems to be comparing it to). The first thing they do right is casting Zooey Deschanel as the lead female, since every role Zooey Deschanel touches is pure gold. You see, it's very easy for a director to find an actress with tits big enough that all then men in the audience wants to Do Her, it's not easy for a director to find an actress who is so sweet and likable that every man in the theater wants to snuggle with her for 4 hours then watch her sleep in their arms. I even liked her in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy despite the fact it sucked. In fact her role in that film was so good that if they just called it "Zooey Deschanel goes to Space with a British Dude" it probably would have gotten very positive reviews.
Now other than the fact the film has an actress that me and a good number of my male friends have a crush on (for good reasons), it deserves credit for doing something original with an unoriginal thing. It kind of like how Punk ceased to be original at the dawn of the 80's so everyone just started playing Post-Punk, (sorry no more Punk Rock references). Yes Jim Carey makes an unfeasible lifestyle change, but it can't be to unfeasible because apparently some Scottish Comedian actual did it for like six months and then wrote a book about it which this film is based off of. So unlike Liar Liar I could see 90% of the things happening in this movie actually happening.
What's really great about this film is the message it preaches. Almost all Romanic Comedies I see nowadays preach the message of "Responsibility," and "Trust," and "Respect." Back in the day this made sense since we were living in an age where getting a divorce was considered about as bad as getting a chocolate bar while on a diet, but it seems whoever wrote Yes Man thought this message got pounded into our heads a bit too well. Yes Man encourages couples to be spontaneous and free spirited, which is good because it seems people are so convinced that once you enter a serious relationship that you have to enter a dull routine. The movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall had a similar message, and I really enjoyed that film as well, thought it didn't have Zooey Deschanel. This movie is most likely the best Romantic Comedy about a guy making an unrealistic lifestyle change I've ever seen, there are some genuinely funny times, and some genuinely heartwarming times, plus the Romance between Carey and Deschanel in this film is a creative and oddly believable. And if anything you should probably go see it just cause I think it's Zooey's best role so far.