Yes Man (**1/2)

If you like Jim Carrey, you’ll probably get some yuks out of this formula comedy in which stuck-in-the-mud Carl, a bank loan agent, agrees to say yes to any and all requests after an encounter with a self-help guru.

It’s sort of a cousin to Carrey’s 1997 effort Liar, Liar, where he has to tell the truth. It’s a real mystery as to why everyone—the best friend he’s avoiding, his submisssive boss, the old lady next door, etc.—keep asking Carl to do things when he’s always said no. Nor is the setup very persuasive, but that’s the formula. There some fun to be had with the gimmick—in one scene, two people are asking him to do opposite things, which is amusing—but not enough for my taste. Instead, the humor is more about Carl suddenly becoming manic instead of depressed and agreeng to all sorts of things.

And then things take a turn toward romantic comedy. Zooey Deschanel is a game female lead, and a charmingly calm foil to Carrey’s mania, but I still have trouble with Carrey’s psycho vibe supposing to be enticing. For all but Carrey’s biggest fans, this is inessential.

IMDB link

viewed 12/11 (screening at Ritz Bourse) and reviewed 12/18/08

The Shaggy Dog (**1/2)

This recycled Disney movie features Tim Allen as the assistant D.A. whose career path is interrupted by his sudden transformation into a sheepdog. Too much family stuff, not enough comic transformations.

This is what I call a gimmick movie. Ideally, the gimmick movie should a) follow the logic of the gimmick and b) exploit the gimmick to its fullest. (Shallow Hal fails the first test, for example, because Hal inexplicably only sees some people’s inner beauty.) The gimmick here, borrowed from its 1959 namesake, is that Tim Allen sometimes turns into a sheepdog. The actual plot more resembles The Shaggy D.A., the 1976 sequel. In those movies, a magic ring causes the ado; the script here (credited to five writers) tries to relate it to DNA. Yet this only highlights that Allen’s transformations don’t have much logic, thus failing the first test. (It’s either sloppiness or a sequel setup that at the end, he’s still, as far as I could tell, not cured.) Kids probably won’t notice this, but Shaggy Dog only gets about a “C+” on the other test. Too much plot time is tied up with the evil doings of the DNA scientists, including Robert Downey Jr., playing a witness in the case Allen is trying. Apparently there’s also a rule that if you remake an old family film (see also Yours, Mine, and Ours and Cheaper by the Dozen) you have to add in a subplot about Dad’s work interfering with his home life. Can someone declare this plot officially tired? On the other hand, I think Tim Allen’s starting to grow on me. Unlike with Steve Martin, I never feel like he should be doing something better.

IMDb link

posted 9/9/13