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The Yes Men Fix The World

Directed by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (As The Yes Men)

Documentary

No classification

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American political pranksters The Yes Men most recently made waves at December's Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. They were the jokers behind a fake press release announcing the Canadian government's new plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 (a considerable change from the current goal of 3 per cent).

If the stunt was devised to embarrass Canada on the world stage, red faces are The Yes Men's stock-in-trade. Here, in the second cinematic outing from the duo, who work under the pseudonyms Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, they document their efforts to ridicule the architects of big business and globalization.

In truth, that doesn't appear so difficult: The pair (real names Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos) operate by setting up plausible but fake websites for multinationals (Exxon, Halliburton...) then sit back and wait for an unsuspecting conference organizer to e-mail looking for a keynote speaker, or a hapless TV news researcher requesting an interview.

Even the hallowed BBC has been suckered: On the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal industrial disaster, in an interview with the network, a Dow Chemical spokesman announced the company would finally make proper reparation to the tune of $12-billion to the Indian city and its victims. (Settlements so far have been less than the claims advanced and litigation is still continuing.) The newsroom let out at a collective cheer at the announcement, with the euphoria lasting about an hour - in which Dow's stock dropped $2-billion in value - before the announcement was revealed as a Yes Men hoax.

Though some commentators called the stunt out as a cruel joke on the victims, a subsequent visit to Bhopal by Bichlbaum and Bonanno showed the locals were glad of the attention the prank brought to their cause.

They may pack less PR punch, but the team's conference shenanigans are undeniably funny. In the fashion of Swift's A Modest Proposal, they present an absurd and often offensive business solution to rooms of company representatives. At one, posing as Halliburton executives, they demonstrate the SurvivaBall - a ridiculous inflatable spherical suit marketed as the answer to all future climate catastrophes - for those rich enough to be able to afford one. Are they laughed off the stage? Hardly. "We are modelling terrorism worldwide," one attendee comments. "I can see this being very useful."

The double takes prompted by the group's fake edition of the New York Times - "All the news we'd like to print" - are similarly priceless, but substantially less terrifying. "Maximum wage bill passed," reads one. "Yeah, good luck with that," snorts a Manhattanite that the Yes Men accost on her way to work.

Though honed from a similar guerrilla ilk, The Yes Men share none of the grandstanding bombast of Michael Moore - imagine instead, a politically conscious, literate Jackass. Though they are, by their own admission, very far from their ambition to "fix the world," their willingness to take on, face-to-face, an apparently insurmountable global capitalist system is surely something to cheer on. Otherwise, how would we have the pleasure of listening to a prominent right-wing think-tank member describe the positive effects of climate change: "Cold-related deaths will go down." You couldn't make it up.