It's amazing where you can get if you just act like you're in charge. "The Yes Men" chronicles the conferences that Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are invited to, under the assumption that they are representing the World Trade Organization, where they deliver bogus presentations that are meant to show the true agenda of the WTO as they see it.
Intercut between the conferences are Bichlbaum and Bonanno preparing, and filmmaker Michael Moore drops by to give us some background information on the World Trade Organization. However, that's seemingly the only background we get on the WTO and what, exactly, it does. Michael Moore is a very polarizing figure for Americans today so one would wonder if he is the best choice to be presenting the background information.
However, there is plenty of background on the Yes Men themselves. It seems Bichlbaum and Bonanno have been pulling pranks for some time now, even before forming the Yes Men. Bichlbaum worked for Maxis, the video game company that made "Sim City," and inserted muscle men making-out with each other on the streets in "Sim Copter."
Bonanno switched several voiceboxes of Barbies and G.I. Joe toys on Christmas so that when little girls received their Barbies they said something like, "Alpha team storm the beach" while the G.I. Joes said, "It's time to go shopping!"
Both had a history of challenging certain perspectives and are interesting documentary subjects, but that is not enough.
"The Yes Men" doesn't quite work as a film. There are hilarious moments where Andy and Mike trick everyone and increasingly get away with more and more. (The entire sequence where the pair pretends that McDonald's has teamed up with the WTO to recycle the feces of Americans into hamburger meat for those in the Third World is one to be savored.) However, the drawback is that the film lacks a compelling narrative. The antics of the Yes Men would have been much more compatible with an ongoing television series, like a more politically aware "Ali G Show."
Compared to recent political documentaries like "Control Room," "The Yes Men" does not match up, although it is not necessarily trying to. It seems as if the overall goal is to entertain, with education as a healthy after-effect, and the Yes Men overwhelmingly succeed at being entertaining. This is a film that can appeal to the masses - all they need are trucker hats and it's like they're on "Punk'd" (just replace the celebrities with the World Trade Organization).
Some of the things that the Yes Men are able to get away with are well worth the price of admission. You won't believe the things they say that go unchecked. The characters of Andy and Mike are extremely neurotic and opinionated but remain extremely likeable characters. In a way, a film like "The Yes Men" is encouraging in that it turns these extremely disturbing issues into sugar-coated, easily digestible pranks, where all of the sudden someone is in a gold-colored skin-tight bodysuit, viewing a hypothetical TV screen from a giant inflatable phallus. Somehow their cause doesn't seem as hopeless anymore.
