The Yes Men (DVD)
Directed by: Chris Smith, Dan Ollman, Sarah Price
Starring: Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno

2004 has been quite a year for documentaries, and the reality craze is still going strong.Michael Moore has blown the doors wide open, and documentaries are getting moreattention now than ever before.But is the Michael Moore style of filmmaking really teaching people anything, or is it justa cheap form of lower/middle class revenge fantasy fulfillment?

I had heard about The Yes Men last year and right away I was envisioning a bunch of young, cockykids playing Jackass-style pranks on politicians… a political version of Punk’d if you will.I was worried that this would be an immature movie that goes for the easy laugh without providingany actual information. But when I read that the movie was being created by the same directorialteam as American Movie and Home Movie, two of my favourite documentaries in recent years, I thoughtthat maybe, just maybe, there was something deeper at work here.

Thankfully, as soon as you are introduced to Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, the movie’s two main stars, it’simpossible not to be won over. These guys are not egotistical or obnoxious, but rather clever,creative, and soft-spoken. Their hearts are in the right place and you easily hop on board with them forthe duration of the film.

It’s important to note that they are not theonly Yes Men. The Yes Men are hundreds of people everywhere working to expose and denouncethe problems with large corporations and powerful politicians in many different ways. For Andy and Mike,their subversive method involves impersonating members of the World Trade Organization in publicappearances and seeing how far they can push the envelope. As the movie shows, they canpush it surprisingly far.

In one of the film’s first pranks, they are accidentally invited to speak at a conference as WTO representatives(by “intercepting” e-mails from a decoy website resembling the WTO). They recruit a friend to createa ridiculous costume for the event, a skin-tight gold body suit with a large phallus protruding from thecrotch, and then produce a fake presentation satirizing corporate downsizing, outsourcing and generalexecutive laziness. The way in which they tie the costume and presentation together ishilarious and absurd, butthe truly fascinating thing is the reactions (or rather, non-reactions)from the victims of the pranks.It is a little bit frightening to think that people are so numb to what’s going on around them that they loseeven the slightest shred of common sense. On the other hand, the outrage displayed by some universitystudents at another fake lecture do give a little bit of hope that we’re not all mere cattle.

While there are only a handful of pranks executed throughout the movie, I thought that the pacing workedwell and the build-ups lead to some very suspenseful moments. The idea of following Mike and Andy throughthe process of preparing the pranks was an effective approach — much better than if the movie had turned outto be more like a TV show with quick, rapid-fire pranks one after another. In the movie you get time to digestwhat The Yes Men have managed to achieve, and yet at 75 minutes the movie is still pretty short and neverdrags.

The Yes Men is definitely a documentary for people who don’t generally like documentaries, and as suchit does feel a bit lacking in terms of information. With the exception of a few obligatory interviewsegments with Michael Moore, very little history or background is given on the World Trade Organization.Even if more exposition would have made the movie too dry, it would definitely have been beneficial to providesome supplementary material on the DVD. Despite this oversight, there is at least an audio commentary trackwith Andy, Mike and the directors, as well as 4 deleted scenes.

I had a lot of fun with The Yes Men and I think you will be too. It’s funny, intelligent andextremely relevant. Definitely worth a rental. — Sean

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