Review – The Yes Men

Of all the pedantic liberal “cause” movies I’ve ever seen, this is the first one that really strikes me as funny. Michael Moore (who appears in it briefly) could learn a lot from these guys. Rather than preach or whine or try to push the ol’ Mike Wallace ambush interview, the group who call themselves the Yes Men work up elaborate pranks and play them on unsuspecting but generally well-deserving targets. The main features of the movie center around the group’s trick of using a phishing copy of the WTO website to get invited to speak at international trade conferences. The speeches involve things like managing slaves by wearing a skin-tight gold suit with a giant phallus-like “computer monitor” in the front or concocting schemes for McDonald’s to sell food made of feces to developing nations. Though only briefly covered in the picture, I also got a real kick out of the group’s efforts to swap the voice chips in Barbies and G.I. Joes and put them back on retail shelves. If you have a point to make in the 21st century, this may well prove to be the best way to make it. Worth seeing