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Movie Details The Yes Men Joke is on big business in 'Yes'
By Wesley Morris
"The Yes Men," a likable documentary profile, follows Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno around the world as they perform as the Yes Men, two antiglobalization activist-pranksters who enjoy the challenge of infiltrating the corporate world only to embarrass it. They don't throw fire extinguishers through The folks at the conference pay attention. Someone even appears to take notes. But not once does anyone rush the main floor and take the two men away for pretending to be spokesmen for the World Trade Organization. In fact, after the "lecture" is over, attendees approach Bichlbaum -- who's lanky and weary-looking yet kindly, and is working under the name Hank Unruh -- for questions and pictures. (Bonanno has been pretending to be his assistant.) The sequence is horrifying and funny: Again, no one seems the least bit fazed by Hank's pro-exploitation presentation. (It's crazy that groupthink has made the corporate world desensitized to its own transgressions.) Thankfully, a later, Yes-Men-fronted speaking engagement with American college kids -- which is so hilariously uncouth it alone is worth the price of a ticket -- does enrage the student body. These outlandish incidents are possible after Bichlbaum and Bonanno set up a website parodying the WTO that is mistaken for the real thing. Neither guy cops to the fraud. Instead they use their sudden credibility as representatives for the organization to intelligently crash events and expose the WTO as morally bankrupt, insensitive, and incompetent. And since we never hear from the real, presumably annoyed WTO anywhere in the film, there's reason to believe it's even insensitive to itself. "The Yes Men" was directed by Sarah Price, Dan Ollman, and Chris Smith. Smith, who also made 1999's "American Movie" and 2002's "Home Movie," has a reliable sense of who'd make entertaining and culturally resonant nonfiction subjects. Here, he and his team have merely taken snapshots, tagging along with Bichlbaum and Bonanno for the strategizing of pranks and the mending of costumes. The filmmaker has a lovely hands-off approach to these two guys that might be too objective. Bichlbaum and Bonanno almost miss that big textiles lecture because their alarm clocks were an hour off. Were the crews', too? This movie could have been a nagging, preachy headache had either man exhibited a tendency for self-righteousness. But both are friendly, almost humble about their mischief, in ways that suggest their pranks are performances that spring from an outlandish but remote place in their personalities. Because, when they're not punking corporations, they seem kind of shy. One of the exciting benefits of this movie is that the Yes Men might soon be able to take their place alongside the staged celebrity gags of Ashton Kutcher's "Punk'd" and the self-inflicted mayhem of the "Jackass" crew, of which only Steve-O and Chris Pontius -- also known as the duo starring in the grody stunt show "Wildboyz" -- remain. Both those shows are enjoyable, deconstructive MTV romps, but like the Yes Men they turn the situational into mocking, interactive, irony-laden comedy. The obvious difference is that Bichlbaum and Bonanno wear suits, spew improvisational ideology, and pull stunts likely to leave Kutcher wringing his trucker's cap in envy.
Movie Showtimes
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Loews Copley Place
11:00 am, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 1:00 pm, 3:30 pm, 3:30 pm, 6:15 pm, 6:15 pm, 8:35 pm, 8:35 pm, 10:40 pm, 10:40 pm
12:45 pm, 12:45 pm, 3:00 pm, 3:00 pm, 5:20 pm, 5:20 pm, 7:50 pm, 7:50 pm, 10:00 pm, 10:00 pm, 11:50 pm, 11:50 pm
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