This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

An Exercise In Nonsense

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Mike and Andy have set out to start making people think differently about the WTO; World Trade Organization. From what started as a prank website about the WTO, mutated into Mike and Andy appearing on TV and giving lectures to people who though they are apart of the WTO. With this mistaken identity, the send out false views of the WTO, showing people how flawed and corrupted the WTO is. With the use of their phallic leisure suit and an interesting idea about recycling human excrement to make new food for third world countries, they start getting people to think; they really stir the pot at times.This is a great doco showing how the little man can still make a difference. These two men have a lot of guts for what they do, and its amazing the haven't been stopped yet. They though set out to do a lot of pranks, this is the major flaw of the film, its not that deep in information. What they do is very intelligent, but they actually don't attack the WTO itself. It would have been if instead of showing their pranks show they showed them going to the WTO and attacked them personally. Another problem is that they ultimately don't make any real change. All the organizations still treat third world countries badly and they will still continue in this manor. The only other flaw is its too short. 80mins isn't a lot of time to get a message across and they could have input a lot more information, adding a lot more depth.But this film is more food for thought than being revelatory, it shows how things are, lifting the veil to show the hypocrisies of all developed countries and their so called help towards third world countries.The Yes Men is funny and very thought provoking.

"The Yes Men" features activists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno impersonating WTO members and attending conferences to get peoples' responses. With every prank that they pull, they keep expecting the attendees to reject their ideas (e.g., a phallic device for bosses to watch employees from all the way around the world), but the attendees passively accept it. This just goes to show what the WTO is really all about.I gotta say, it's amazing that these guys were able to pull it off. What was really funny was the names that they came up with: Granwyth Hulatbert and Hardy Hank Unruh. And nobody ever checked to see if they were real! The whole thing may seem incredible, but we should take it seriously.

I had been a little let down by the other reviews of this film, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it. It's true, the film is not perfect, there are a few problems and characteristics that would make it inaccessible for certain viewers.The first problem is that the pacing is awkwardly slow at certain points. Most of the walking around footage, conversation between the guys, all of the behind-the-scenes material just drags the pacing of the film down. The second problem is that the film requires people to listen carefully to what is being said. The individual sentences of some of their speeches might not sound too bad, but the are so carefully insinuating of the cruel nature of the message that it will slip past anyone who wants to be hit over the head with a point. The fact that we see so little straight talk in our politicians and from companies is the reason why they can get away with these sorts of things; we've learned to tune out their mumbo-jumbo.These two problems aside, I found their approach remarkably clever. Less blatant and less confrontive than Moore, these guys have a degree of class that is rarely seen in many satirists. The "disbanding" sequence has not been described well in these pages. The writing suggests that it is somehow pointless, but just because it isn't outrageous doesn't mean that there wasn't a point. Listen to the reporters - they'll let you know exactly what the point was.

It's a shame the filmmakers do not have the same talents as the yes men. WHile the pranks are supreme -- intelligent, insightful and clever -- the same cannot be said for this movie. Instead of giving us insight into what makes these pranksters tick, the film dilly dallies for what seems like hours over the fact the fact that the yes men miscalculated the time zone (!) in Finland. In a word: Who cares about the time zone?! But, alas, the film treads water for ages. But worse than that is the fact that the movie has no sense of irony, no joie de vivre and no fun. It's just a badly made doc about an interesting subject.For people who want to see a film that makes a great uber-prank on pranksters big and small, my recommendation is the Anarchist Cookbook.