Jim Carrey has seen many ups and downs throughout his career. Usually his ups are with comedies like “Dumb and Dumber”, “Me, Myself, and Irene”, and “The Mask”. His lows are dramas like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “The Number 23”. If there is anything to learn from this, it’s that Jim Carrey is a comedian, and for him, comedies are the movies he was made for. Thankfully, “Yes Man” is a return to the Carrey of the 90s.
“Yes Man” revolves around the life of Carl, a banker who ducks everybody in his life for one reason or another. After meeting a seemingly eccentric friend of his (played by John Michael Higgins, “The Break Up”), he goes to a seminar that encourages people to say, simply, “Yes”. What follows is a funny twist of events where Carl says yes to everything that is asked of him. I don’t want to spoil anything else, so we’ll stop there.
The acting in this movie is great. Not only does Carrey do what he does best, but the inclusion of a love interest played by Zooey Deschanel (“Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”) and Bradley Cooper (“Wedding Crashers”) enable the cast to really play off of each other. There are times when Jim Carrey doesn’t seem all that into character, but that may be age catching up. Over all though, they are able to carry the movie through comedy, love, and drama.
The movie doesn’t have much in the way of effects, but what little it has is done well. The best “effect” is a scene where they go skydiving, but that isn’t that hard to do well.
The story holds up as well. It has that “comedic over the top” quality, that any Jim Carrey movie has, but it does it well without becoming too campy. We can usually identify at least one person in our lives who acts like Carl, and can also easily place the other characters with their counterparts in our lives. Even when the things Carl says yes to get a bit crazy, they still stay in the realm of semi-believable.
As a comedy it does its job, although lacks at some times. Carrey and crew keep the comedy coming but there were many times where a joke was either really bad, or a long period went without a joke. However even during scenes where it was supposed to be dramatic, comedy was still peppered throughout to keep you entertained.
Is this the return of Carrey to comedy genre for good? Only time will tell, but this is defiantly a step in the right direction. Carrey and cast deliver a solid comedy with a tad of drama to make a great movie.