The Yes Men

The Yes Men

Directed by: Dan Ollman & Sarah Price

Starring: Andy Bichlbaum

Genre: Documentary

Run Time: 83 min.

Release Date: September 2004

On The Web: Unofficial Site

Teaser: Movie Trailer

Reviewed by Byron Merritt

You might often hear the phrase “You’ve got to see this to believe it,” and although I’m going to risk sounding like a cliché, you need to see this documentary to believe it.

It isn’t that THE YES MEN is some spectacularly put together documentary that’ll blow your mind. It isn’t. It’s not filmed particularly well, and needed some help in the editing department (lingering on guys working on their computers is about as entertaining as watching paint dry).

But the subject matter and the response by supposed “professionals” in the business world were so striking as to be baffling. Let me explain.

This is the story of two geeks named Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, The Yes Men. They are antiglobalization activists who’ve gone extreme in order to get their views across.

Initially they set up a website that mirrored George W. Bush’s, including placing some rather rude (if not true) commentary about our current Prez on the site. After having enough fun there, the two whizzes set their sights on The World Trade Organization, and put up a mirror site of it, too. But this time they went a bit further. Occasionally businesses from around the world would mistake their fake WTO website for the real one and would send our two pranksters invitations to meet and talk about WTO matters. This included a segment on CNN and then, later, to European countries where they set up outlandish topic discussions (including a huge phallic device used to monitor employees — employees who were somehow connected via slavery by Mike and Andy — and to stimulate certain gluteal muscle groups when things went right or wrong). What was astonishing was the acceptance of this device by the European country in question (sure, they all laughed when they saw it, but they didn’t completely dismiss it either!).

Our two WTO phonies finally get the response they wanted after visiting a college campus posing as WTO officials and sporting the idea of recycling human waste into poop-patties in order to help feed starving third world populations. Finally the college folks understood the mockery and threw things at Mike and Andy.

It is a bit disturbing, however, that someone could pull-off such an incredible hoax. The ending, too, is astonishing; our two boys go to Australia and state that the WTO is shutting down and will be reinventing itself in a more humane fashion. This was picked up by numerous news agencies and sent around the media globe!

Although interesting, disturbing, and flat-out hysterically funny in many portions, the documentary does lag when it shows our two main guys sleeping, playing with their computers, or other items that really bogged the story down and nearly brought it to a halt. But if you hang in there and watch the entire film, you’ll be pleasantly — if not worriedly — surprised.