Jim Carrey plays Carl Allen, a bank loan officer who has withdrawn since his divorce from Stephanie. He ignores his friends Peter and Rooney and misses Peter’s engagement party. His old colleague Nick pushes him toward a motivational seminar where guru Terrence has him make a “covenant with the universe” to say yes to everything.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
Terrence and the Covenant
The premise is a contract, not a character. Carl says yes to a homeless man and ends up stranded in Elysian Park with no gas and a dead phone. He meets Allison, played by Zooey Deschanel, who gives him a hectic scooter ride and kisses him.
Tillie and the Shelves
Back home, his elderly neighbour Tillie offers him oral sex for helping put up shelves. He declines, hits bad luck, returns, and enjoys it. That is the film’s idea of a joke: the covenant has a price, and the price is played for a gag.
Munchausen by Proxy at the Hollywood Bowl
Carl learns Korean, guitar and how to fly planes. He befriends his boss Norman, helps Lucy with her bridal shower, and renews things with Peter and Rooney. A band flyer leads him to Munchausen by Proxy, whose lead singer is Allison. They sneak into the Hollywood Bowl and sing “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
| Release | Date |
|---|---|
| United States | December 19, 2008 |
| United Kingdom | December 26, 2008 |
| Production start, Los Angeles | October 2007 |
The Liar Liar Problem
Peyton Reed directs from a script by Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul and Christofer Tufton. The film runs 104 minutes and is loosely based on Danny Wallace’s 2005 memoir. Wallace cameos. Warner Bros. released it, and it made $223 million worldwide.
What the Money Says
The box office is not a defence. Yes Man works only when Carrey is allowed to be a man rather than a mechanism, and the covenant is a mechanism. Every yes is a plot point, not a choice. Deschanel’s Allison is a collection of quirks — the scooter, the band, the Bowl — with no life outside Carl’s improvement. Terence Stamp’s Terrence exists to hand over the rule and vanish.
Why It Does Not Hold
The comparison to Liar Liar is fair, and it is not the problem. Liar Liar at least let its rule hurt. Yes Man keeps rewarding Carl, so the covenant never costs him anything he cannot absorb by the next scene. The Korean, the guitar, the plane are skills as punchlines.
Carrey is game. The film around him is not. It mistakes a premise for a story and a montage for growth, and it ends exactly where it began — a man saying yes because a rule told him to.
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