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The tone of Wallace's story is important, as there's nothing terribly dynamic about his narrative style. Events are discussed in a very casual conversational style that leans quite heavily on a love of witty dialog. The plot carries along in a very well-constructed dramatic arc that would seem artificial were Wallace's narrative style not so convincing. The disparate array of events that occur to him, as bizarre as some of them are, are delivered with a kind of straightforward working class everyman kind of wit that makes Yes Man work extremely well. It's fun without feeling forced. It's uplifting without violently and aggressively tugging at the heartstrings.

The most fascinating end of the story subtly sets in as we see Wallace's friends reacting to his strange behavior. His self-guided desire to unwaveringly follow the inadvertent advice of a casual stranger develops into something of an unhealthy obsession at times. The line between charming writer's eccentricity and genuine mental illness seems harrowingly thin at times. The subtle uncertainty of Wallace's state of mind lends Yes Man a uniquely charming vulnerability that goes a long way toward developing a charm that keeps it from being just another autobiographical yearlong project book. It's not exactly the kind of charm that makes for an international best-seller, but it IS the kind of charm that helps solidify a pretty successful writing career in the UK. It's also the kind of charm that looks interesting to Hollywood producers. When rumor starts circulating that someone like Jack Black is looking into the film rights to a book like this, it's not long before momentum builds and the world ends-up with a big budget film gets released with enough marketing to push it to the top of the box-office for at least one week...

The Movie

Unfortunately, Jack Black did NOT, in fact, end up being at all involved in the Yes Man film. What's worse, Wallace ended up having very little to do with it either. When Wallace was informed that Jim Carrey would be starring in an Americanized, Hollywood adaptation of his book, he was excited. Evidently he'd been a fan of the spastic, rubbery actor since In Living Color.

A book that was so driven by the voice of a single, idiosyncratic author has been adapted into what appears to be a standard assembly-line movie churned out on a Hollywood assembly line. Richard D. Zanuck and a number of other producers put together a project with three relatively new screenwriters, one of whom had no previous credits worth speaking of and the other two whose work weighed pretty heavily in TV. They cranked out a script that was directed by Peyton Reed. Jim Carrey stars as Carl Allen - a loan officer at a bank in California who has been in a rut since a divorce. Unwilling to try anything new or even make it out of his apartment after work, Allen's life seems to be on pause until an encounter with an ex-co-worker finds him visiting a seminar by self-help guru Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp.) Bundley preaches a fanatical devotion to the word, "yes," to a convention hall full of devotees.

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