Yes Man

My Angle: Jim Carrey is a guilty pleasure. The title alone captured my attention – sounded like a great sermon illustration.

Kid Friendly: Are you kidding? PG-13 almost always means “adults only” in my mind. Very crude humor, bad language, premarital sex , including one night stands, very mild nudity (see below).

Spiritual issues: a negative attitude does lead to a negative life, saying yes has powerful spiritual connotations as does saying no.

Right out the gates the movie is funny, funny because in some ways it is all too true. Jim Carrey; in avoiding his friends, resembles all too many people who avoid God – even though God sees everything. I don’t want to spoil the movie so I won’t go too far into its plot. It is enjoyable, laughable, and all too true for many people.

A few things I wish hadn’t happened: Jim Carrey having a sexual event with an elderly neighbor (this scene alone makes it inappropriate for teens); later the same woman and one of his friends are implied to do the same; Premarital sex with Carrey’s love interest (all of these are not visually explicit but they are clearly implied; severally sexually explicit comments occur throughout; the closing scene although funny did not require the flashing vision of several hundred naked people (they could have been in their underwear and it would have been just as funny).

The implications of saying “Yes” are powerfully evocative; however, learning how to say "yes" to the right things and to say "no" to the rest would be an even better lesson. This movie seems to be saying “we live in a world of “no” let’s move into a life of “yes”. I think what is most true is that we say “yes” to all the wrong things, and “no” to all the wrong things! The movie touches on that truth but simply runs out of time and energy and does not deepen the thought.

As usual I do not expect Hollywood to expound the good news.

I do believe that our freedom in Christ is the freedom to try new things, it is a freedom to fail, and try again.

Rating 3 out of 5 stars.

Bill Crawford the Bayou Christian