The Yes Men

2003 "Changing the world one prank at a time."
6.8| 1h20m| en| More Info
Released: 07 September 2003 Released
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Budget: 0
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Official Website: http://www.theyesmen.org/
Synopsis

A comic, biting and revelatory documentary following a small group of prankster activists as they gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television and at business conferences around the world.

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Reviews

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.
Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.
SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
bandarmae These two guys are just the kind of political activists we need today. They show how every person can fight for justice and even go up against enormous corporations if you plan a careful and clever strategy using dark humor as your main weapon. What's really amazing is that they're small-town filmmakers from upstate NY who have pulled off a movie that's much better than most of the stuff Hollywood churns out.Though this is an older film, it's still one of the funniest and most satisfying documentaries you'll ever enjoy. You won't believe the stunts they get away with--and you'll be rooting for them every step of the way.You can even check it out for free now on Hulu.com.
jerome_horwitz The Yes Men is a documentary of a group of pranksters who falsely assume the identities of World Trade Organization officials. The purpose of the group, The Yes Men, is to point out the lack of humanitarianism exhibited by those interested in world politics.The Yes Men are invited to speak at different functions around the globe masquerading as legitimate W.T.O. officials. To make they're point The Yes Men produce totally absurd concepts and presentations.The first conference covers how the W.T.O. views the future of the textile industry. The Yes Men come up with a concept for a business leisure suit. During the presentation, animations and an actual prototype suit worn by the fake speaker are used to demonstrate the possibilities. Describing the suit, it's shiny gold and skin tight, and has a large phallus shaped groin attachment which has a TV screen on it so a manager can monitor employees and stimulate them as necessary, all while doing leisure (aka "freedom") time activities. Unfortunately the audience at this conference doesn't appear to react at all to this totally absurd concept especially to the idea the poor workers need constant monitoring, and the wealthy management simply must have more leisure availability. It's like this is completely normal! The Yes Men next present a fake W.T.O. lecture on recycled feces burgers at a college in the U.S.A. Fortunately they finally meet some resistance to these outlandish ideas. One may wonder if this same concept had been introduced at the prior conference how would those people have reacted? This movie is a commentary on the current state of world trade, and how corporations run everything.The last conference has The Yes Men declaring the W.T.O. will be dissolving itself, basically due to it's inability to keep a humanitarian view regarding trade policies. The ironic thing is in post conference interviews, many of the attendees seem to agree with these basic self-accusations brought on by the W.T.O., against itself. One may wonder what happened to these folks that were duped, and how they're comments about a fake dissolving may have affected their lives personally or professionally?This movies is enjoyable as a satirical comedy with a message. However, we really don't learn that much about the details of these trade problems. Also as fun as it is to blame corporations. Corporations are run by people, and so is the W.T.O., and so are governments. Seems to me maybe they're focusing on the wrong problem.5/10
the_crock I saw the Yes men recently, a documentary about guys who essentially pretend to be from the World Trade Organisation and then pull funny stunts in order to prove that the World Trade Organisation is an evil empire.Shame it's a really tedious documentary, I mean you had all the elements of a great documentary, guys with inflatable wands, telling a bunch of uni students they are planning to feed third world countries with first world feces. I mean come on, how could you make a documentary like that boring.Well firstly, you would show the two main protagonists in various apartments for most of the movie. Also you could make sure that you end on a really slow note, taking as much enjoyment out of the inflatable wand as possible. And maybe, just maybe, you could show an amazing amount of people in lifts and walking.Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore this isn't.
jdollak 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.