The Yes Men (2003)

When I initially heard about this documentary, I thought that it would be, first and foremost, really funny. However, I felt that almost all of the humor in this movie falls as flat as their body suit prank did. If I was a member of this Yes Men group, one of the first goals would be to make an impact. With the pranks that were carried out, an impact was hardly made. Rather, the audiences were kind of lost with what the Yes Men were trying to convey. Were they joking around or kind of serious? Is their speech engaging at all or is it just a bore? Did their messages even make sense at all? I thought their first farce with the body suit was really bad and lost on everyone who viewed it. The second go with the recycled burgers was much better, but once the question and answer session began the Yes Men seemed very lost. I would think they could have thought on their feet a bit better than that. The final prank was alright again, but it seemed that with the spotlight that they were given, they really could have accomplished more. As for the documentary itself, I did not think it was put together very well. There was nothing creative about it. There was nothing added to this by it being a documentary rather than an hour long television show spotlighting what the group actually did.After I finished watching this and began reflecting upon what I just saw, I was really left wondering how much this group was really able to accomplish. It feels to me that the people who put this documentary together really tried to make it seem that the Yes Men made more of an impact than they really did.I definitely agree with what the Yes Men set out to accomplish, but I'm not sure if their story really deserved to be made into a feature length documentary.

"The Yes Men" co-director, Chris Smith, created possibly the funniest documentary movie I've ever seen, "American Movie" (2000), about a zany character named Mark Borchardt, himself an amateur filmmaker and world class natural slacker comedian.Smith's next (and most recent) film was "Home Movie" (2002), a disappointing study of five eccentric houses and the people who created and lived in them. That film proved it was Borchardt, not Smith, who made the earlier film so good, and that when it comes to probing the lives of unusual people, Smith is no Errol Morris. Now, with help, Smith takes a different tack, entering the fast paced, highly competitive world of "polidocs": documentaries about hot political and social issues, a burgeoning film genre these days.The Yes Men are an actual group of prankster geopolitical activists, led by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who oppose the Bush Administration and the current trends in global trade regulation and the WTO, which, they and many other critics assert, exploit developing nations to make rich countries richer.The Yes Men group has maintained a website with a domain name close to that used by President Bush as his official website. On The Yes Men's site, they have posted many items that are sufficiently critical of the Administration that Bush operatives tried to bluff these fellows into removing the site. The Yes Men have also succeeded in sending representatives to speak at international trade conferences, masquerading as official representatives of the WTO and getting away with it.Actually, they always use the same man, Andy Bichlbaum, as speaker, but he uses a variety of humorous aliases. His top performance to date was one in Finland, where he removed a carefully constructed pull away business suit, to reveal a shiny gilt colored superhero suit underneath, replete with a three foot long "penis," also covered in the same shiny gold fabric, enlarged at the tip (OK, glans to be anatomically precise) to encompass a small TV screen. This suit was proposed by Andy as a useful work costume for a third world sweatshop superintendent, enabling him to efficiently watch over the work force using video. What amuses is the way that Andy gets away with making outrageous statements (always delivered in deadpan, serious mode), and even pulling off appearing in his soft porn spacesuit getup before audiences of professional accountants, corporate officers and government ministry types, who take him seriously! When he tried the same stunt with an audience of college students in Plattsburg, New York, they caught on to his artifice quickly. So, does this mean that people who attend international trade-related conferences actually don't listen to the speakers? Do language barriers get in the way? Or are those people more gullible or hip than the rest of us? Who can tell? I found this film mildly funny but crippled by its superficiality of content and sloppy editing. Not only is no effort made to elucidate the issues of world trade problems, there isn't even an attempt at coherent presentation of the anti-WTO position. To my surprise, this film was the Audience Award Winner at the 2004 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. My rating: 5.5/10 (C+). (Seen on 12/19/04). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.

I was impressed with the elaborate pranks and that they were able to at least look like they were giving competent presentations. That was it. The rest of it was fairly stupid. One of the first big jokes centers around a presentation made in Finland about a ridiculous phallic employee monitoring device. I suppose we were supposed to find humor in the fact that the Finns failed to react. I think it showed more about the ignorance and stupidity of the Yes Men than the audience. Even if they hadn't pulled out the giant penis thing, I'm sure the audience wouldn't have asked any questions about the WTO's plan to monitor employees. No doubt the audience knew that the WTO would never become involved in something like that, and I can imagine it would be fairly typical for a group of Europeans to remain quiet about an American making an ass of himself in public. The most frustrating thing I found was that all the pranks that were meant to satire the WTO missed the mark completely. The Yes Men seemed to be completely uninformed about what the WTO does. I'm not sure how you can satirize something if you don't understand it. It would be sort of like making "Spinal Tap" based upon lives of circus performers. The WTO simply doesn't become involved in individual corporations, like McDonald's. So, while the idea of reconstituted feces being sold as food may be slightly amusing, it's irrelevant to the operations of the WTO, which is problematic if you're trying to poke fun at the them. In general, it's pretty much run-of-the-mill uninformed arguments you usually hear from people that denounce organizations like the World Bank or IMF with some pranks thrown in to entertain. Knee jerk liberalism with a twist, in other words. Which in my book, is equally as asinine as those that buy whatever FOX News or W is selling. On the plus side, if you don't know anything about the WTO or other cultures, you might find this amusing.

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from a documentary called "The Yes Men" that was directed by three people, but what I got was a really fun 80 minutes. The film follows a few members of the anti-corporate activist group (whose main target is the World Trade Organization) as they pull pranks in order to sabotage the large companies/organizations they disagree with. Pretty much what Michael Moore (who is featured for a few moments) does, only The Yes Men handle things in a different manner. Stemming from a situation in which they were mistaken for the World Trade Organization after someone viewed the satirical website they designed ABOUT the World Trade Organization, they accepted an offer to speak on behalf of the WTO at an International conference. Since then, they have made sporadic appearances on panels, in lectures, even on television representing the WTO, only obviously not spewing the WTO rhetoric, but inserting their own (most times offensive and outlandish) topics instead."The Yes Men" is not a great documentary, but I eat this kind of stuff right up because I find the concept of creative activism to be an intriguing one, and the way that these men are managing to infiltrate some of these organizations is not only amusing but really intelligent as well. The film is incredibly short, and personally, it left me wanting more, but I don't think there is a lot more that could be said about what they are doing that wasn't already succinctly addressed. I found the subject to be an interesting and increasingly relevant one, and the four featured Yes Men were hilarious and endearing. There wasn't a lot for me to dislike about the film, but it's not something I would recommend to a lot of people. Michael Moore fans would really dig it though. 7/10 --Shelly