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"Even if the Yes Men don't exactly fix the world in their documentary, they certainly give it something to think about." - Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
"The film is entertaining in its own right, and thought-provoking. Why don't more people quickly see through their hoaxes?" - Roger Ebert
"Beyond question, the results are overstated, outrageous and wildly, scatologically juvenile. But they're also a hoot to watch." - Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle
Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys who just can't take "no" for an answer. They have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits, the Yes Men lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets in ever more extreme ways - basically doing everything that they can to wake up their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
One day Andy, purporting to be a Dow Chemical spokesperson, gets on the biggest TV news program in the world and announces that Dow will finally clean up the site of the largest industrial accident in history, the Bhopal catastrophe. The result: as people worldwide celebrate, Dow's stock value loses two billion dollars. People want Dow to do the right thing, but the market decides that it can't.
The reality hits Andy and Mike like a ton of bricks: we have created a market system that makes doing the right thing impossible, and the people who appear to be leading are actually following its pathological dictates. If we keep putting the market in the driver's seat, it could happily drive the whole planet off a cliff.
At conference after conference, the Yes Men try to wake up their corporate audiences to this frightening prospect, in the process taking on some of the world's biggest and baddest corporations. Just one example: as Exxon, Andy and Mike demonstrate a new biofuel made from climate-change victims. It's a gut-busting laugh riot - one of several in the film - to see the unsuspecting audience learn that the lit candles they hold are made out of dead people.
On their journey, the Yes Men act as gonzo journalists, delving deep into the question of why we have given the market more power than any other institution to determine our direction as a society. They visit the twisted (and accidentally hilarious) underworld of the free-market think tanks, where they figure out a way to defeat the logic that's destroying our planet. And as they appear on the BBC before 300 million viewers, or before 1000 New Orleans contractors alongside Mayor Ray Nagin, the layers of lies are peeled back to reveal the raw heart of truth - a truth that brings with it hope.
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Even the title's a jape: The Yes Men don't fix the world, despite their daredevil efforts. But it's such hyperbolic idealism that propels the Yes Men, a liberal activist group fronted by two disheveled guys, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who really would like to fix the world. To them it's a place rotten with corporate greed and corruption. They're here to help. (Full review)