Maybe...

Rating: Null/10 (24 September 2010)

A long time ago I read a book by Luke Rhinehart called the Dice Man in which a man allows all the decisions in his life to be made on the roll of a pair of die and, had I not known that this film is actually based on someone's real-life experiment, I would have considered this film to have been a variation on that basic concept. As it is, whereas Rhinehart's book understandably focused on the gradual erosion of the hero's character because he was no longer responsible for making any decisions in his life, this idea, which practically demands to be the core of a story like this, is only arbitrarily explored in the very last reel of Yes Man. It's one of the drawbacks of having to cater for a mass audience that is identified by its lowest common denominators, I suppose, but it means this film fails to be anywhere as near as interesting as it could have been.
Jim Carrey is about ten years too old for the part of Carl, a bachelor with low self-esteem who is slowly cutting himself off from the world (essentially saying 'no' to it) whose life is turned around when he is practically press-ganged into a personality enhancement scheme in which he must say yes to all and any suggestions, instructions or requests. Cue much hilarity with our hapless hero giving his money to tramps, learning to speak Korean and fly a plane, approving loans to all and sundry in his job as a loans officer, and receiving oral 'pleasure' from the toothless old lady who lives next door.
The film has some genuinely humorous moments and manages to generate an enjoyable feel-good atmosphere as Carl first discovers his life taking unexpected, life-affirming directions, but ironically the more his life seems to develop a focus – mostly in the form of Zooey Deschanel – the more the film starts to drift aimlessly. And when it does finally pull itself together for its final reel it manufactures such a ridiculous plot device (Zooey learns of his 'yes to anything philosophy' when he is arrested on suspicions of terrorist activities aroused by his free-spirited lifestyle) that you almost end up feeling the film wasn't as good as it actually was.