Yes Man (2008)

[Movie 259 / Day 275]

Since his wife left him, Carl (Jim Carrey) is letting life pass him by. Screening his phone calls, avoiding his friends and generally hiding in his apartment a lot. Until he happens to bump into an old friend who gives him a brochure for a Yes Programme seminar, which tries to inspire people to say YES and grab every opportunity they can. He goes along but isn’t taking it seriously until the speaker (Terrence Stamp) singles him out and makes a covenant with him to say yes to everything. Obviously, saying yes to everything is going to cause some problems, but for the most part, he goes along with it and finds even the bad stuff tends to lead to good things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise – including meeting and falling in love with Allison (Zooey Deschanel), a girl with her own unique outlook on life.

So it’s a quirky romcom then, but it’s not a typical Jim Carrey comedy; the rubberman doesn’t get to stretch his face much in this one, which is a good thing. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I was going to; part of the problem for me was I’d read (and loved) the (Danny Wallace) book it’s based on, where the author actually spent a year saying yes to everything and recording the results. I wasn’t sure it would translate into a Carrey romcom particularly well. Happily, I’m wrong; the result is a sweet tale that is short enough to keep the story flowing and hold the attention whilst being genuinely amusing in places. Even Terrence Stamp didn’t annoy me as much as he usually does.

One of the better romcoms I’ve seen recently.

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