THE YES MEN
Directed by: Chris Smith, Dan Ollman & Sarah Price.
Produced by: Chris Smith & Sarah Price.
Director of Photography: Chris Smith & Dan Ollman.
Edited by: Dan Ollman.
Released by: UA.
Country of Origin: USA. 83 min. Rated: R.
With: Andy Bichlbaum & Mike Bonanno.

Satire is the choice of weapon for the Yes Men, a group of sincere pranksters with a conscious. Having launched a Web site lampooning George W. Bush in 1999, they set their sights on the World Trade Organization, "the UN of commerce," attacking its economic policies toward smaller, developing countries. Through this site, which mimics the WTO's, they receive invitations to speak at business conferences and on television as WTO representatives. This amiable documentary follows Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (founder of the Barbie Liberation Organization) on three worldwide stunts. The first speaking engagement is in Finland, where Bichlbaum, as Hank Hardy Uhruh, poses the question, "How did workers ever become a problem?" Declaring the American Civil War unnecessary, he asserts that in regards to slavery, the market would have "sorted it out." All this before he reveals the pièce de résistance: the management leisure suit -a gold lamé space suit with a protruding phallus. And in their most outlandish trick (nine months in the planning), the Yes Men propose to a class of indignant college students a method for McDonald's to recycle the world's resources. Aided by a hilarious computer animated demonstration, this parody would make Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) proud.

The film is more engaging and less predictable than Spurlock’s corporate broadside as the cameras follow the thirty-something whiz kids through the detailed planning stages, the mishaps, and then the execution. Less agitprop or a call to arms, The Yes Men is more amusing than enlightening. One wonders if the pranks could be too easily laughed off or if the Yes Men's ingenuity could be used to a more legislative or educational purpose. (Bankrolling their elaborate schemes and international travel is recording mogul Herb Alpert.) Even those who get the joke are not challenged. Nothing is asked of them or the viewer, and the apparent acquiescence of the Finnish might be due to polite reserve rather than acceptance. The origins, let alone the practices of the WTO are only skimmed. (The Corporation deals with the dark of side of international trade, but even there, the WTO is only in the background.) Kent Turner
September 24, 2004