As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, this week I gave a chance for the recent film of Yes Man, which is a comedy based off the same named book by Danny Wallace. I’ve held off on watching the film for a very, very long time as the book was an amazing read and I wondered just how potentially disappointing it would be to watch it. As you know by now, I have finally given to viewing the film. I actually went in with strangely high hopes before watching despite my literature reservations due to such inclusions as Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Terence Stamp and John Michael Higgins who have all produced wonderful pieces of film in their colourful histories.
However, this is NOT one of them. I was absolutely right to hold back.
Before I go into great detail, let me just clear one thing up in terms of how I viewed the film. Everything I speak of within the next few paragraphs comes from two perspectives – that of how good the film actually was as a film, and that of how well it compared to the book. Sadly, as I was expecting, it failed miserably in both areas for me. It probably seems exceptionally harsh but I can’t help but feel incredibly let down by the potential of the film based on how amusing, brilliant and interesting the book was. To be fair, the film definitely has it’s great moments – all of these moments unsurprisingly are because of lead Jim Carrey who once again proves how he probably is the best comic actor in the business(although his serious roles are top notch too!). If the film didn’t have Carrey, I would have given up halfway through.
In my previous post, I mentioned how much it annoyed me that Hollywood adaptations of books tend to be nothing like the original, and forget a vast amount of what makes the books so great. After watching Yes Man, it once again suffers seriously from this. It just bares such little, little resemblance to the book. Fair enough you can say it’s based off the book and shares the same principles but it just fails so miserably where Wallace’s adventure succeeded with such positivity. It’s a little frustrating in the two aspects I watched, the whole film just lacked something to really get it going and make it work. Sure it had a pretty strong cast, and some of them stood out at times. Where it gained in cast choices, it lacked in story direction. It was predictable, clichéd and just annoying at times to be quite honest with you with the main example concerning annoyances coming from the fact that when Carl (Carrey) said no to questions, his life turned disastrous in the click of a finger. This happens several times in the film, and it bugged me enough the first time it occurred.
The film took the Yes man idea the wrong way with how Wallace was trying to create such an ideology within his book. The thing is, one of the most enjoyable aspects of Wallace’s writing within Yes Man is that he doesn’t simply mention things he says Yes to, and move on. You get to hear everything he did, and as well as that, hear about it in the future and what the outcome of saying yes was, not to mention his thoughts at the time of being forced to say Yes in difficult situations. In comparison to this, the film barely does such a thing. Sure we see the odd after effect of saying Yes but often it simple pushed aside for the generic Hollywood storyline of a man wanting to be with a woman, messing it up, then making up. This generic piece of drivel overlooking the whole point of being the Yes Man really made the film suffer, and combined with a lot of weak scenes and weak characters that never actually existed in the book just made it too much of a poor combination for me to enjoy. It’s just a huge shame.
I hate being constantly negative though, and there are areas worth praising. The obvious area is going to be getting Jim Carrey to star as the lead character Carl Allen, a choice which made the film bearable to watch for 100 minutes. He was fantastic in his role, and even after all these years, he proved why he’s still one of Hollywood’s top actors. He provided scenes that conveyed a serious nature yet can instantly turn it about into a hilarious moment without being cheesy, patronising or stupid. One scene saw Allen (Carrey) and a co-worker in the film’s bank messing about with mimes, leading up to Carrey selotaping his face up to the terrifying yet mind numbingly funny look since Pete Burns’ last bit of plastic surgery. There were a few standout scenes in the film and, in what I’m sure is not a coincidence, all of them involved Carrey’s character. He was a breath of fresh air alongside Zooey Deschanel as the film’s love interest, who constantly came across as dull and monotone. I’m actually a fan of Deschanel but she did not bring her ball to the park with Yes Man whatsoever.
Ah well. I pondered the thought of it being a disappointment and I tried my hardest to enjoy it. Quite simply, it let me down where I was hoping for more. Alas… there was also one major highlight which had me clapping in joy from the sheer shock of it happening, and I just simply had to take a photo to show you guys:
Danny Wallace actually got a cameo!
Brilliant!!
However, the fact that this was the highlight of the film for me I think says it all.
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