Photo Supplied

Andy Bichlbaum with the Yes Men’s fake New York Times front page

The Yes Men Fix the World
Written and directed by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. Metro Cinema (Zeidler Hall, The Citadel) Friday March 26th  to Monday March 29th, DVD release April 6                                
***1/2

Even if you don’t recognize the name, or haven’t seen their new documentary, you may well be familiar with the Yes Men.

They’re the duo (real names Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) responsible for the prank wherein one of them posed as a Dow Chemical executive live on BBC World News, and issued a massive — and massively unauthorized — apology for the industrial disaster at a Dow-controlled factory in Bhopal in the 1980s, from which thousands of Indians died. The fake exec goes on to promise full compensation to the other hundreds of thousands still living with the after-effects. Within hours, Dow’s stock dropped three per cent.

They’re also the guys who blanketed New York City last summer with 1.2 million copies of their dream edition of The New York Times, which announced, among other things, the end of the Iraq War, the passing of a “maximum wage” act and breaking news that oil profits would be permanently nationalized and used to fund climate change efforts.

These are just two of the stunts captured in The Yes Men Fix the World, and the others follow a very similar vein.

Also co-directors, Bichlbaum and Bonanno deliver a very particular style of guerrilla satire, one that combines deadly serious left-wing politics and a jovial, almost smirking façade — think of the acerbic field segments Rob Corrdry and Stephen Colbert used to file for The Daily Show several years ago.

They’re staunchly anti-globalization, but they’d rather embarrass corporations with high-profile hijinks than organize a protest and shout at them through a megaphone.

As the film keenly demonstrates, the Yes Men’s intentions are noble and their tactics are undeniably effective. But something still irks me about these guys. For all their dedication to the cause, they’re too committed to the theatrics of their whole image — namely, suit-wearing dopes who live in a decrepit warehouse and who’ve stumbled into this life of pranksterism entirely by fluke. And they continue to feign surprise that these mega-corporations don’t immediately see the error of their ways and repent in the face of a Yes Men prank, as if the spectacle and stone-faced camouflage isn’t what they were really after all along. In other words, there’s a bit too much shtick to their shtick.

Ultimately, though, these aren’t deal-breaking complaints. Bichlbaum and Bonanno are fighting the good fight here. They’re able to turn more heads by manufacturing candles allegedly made from human remains, or huge inflatable balls people are meant to live inside during natural disasters, than even the most compelling scientific study or op-ed column. If their film is a little too self-satisfied, or its scope too unwieldy, so what?

Even if the Yes Men aren’t fixing the world, at least they’re part of the solution.