THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING
The Orchard
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B+
Director: Laura Nix, the Yes Men
Cast: Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonano, Benadette Chandia Kodili, Gitz Crazyboy, Tito Ybarra, Mike Mathieu, Leonid Vlassov
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 6/3/15
Opens: June 12, 2015
Just as you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, you can brint down your enemies with humor rather than with insults. One recent example is Iran’s cartoon contest, awarding prizes for the best cartoons that make fun of ISIS. (Don’t bother drawing cartoons of the Prophet, though, as the Tehran regime has only a selective sense of humor. But the point remains: the enemy will become more aroused if you laugh at its icons.)
The Yes Men, returning after its 2004 film “The Yes Men” which made fun of the World Trade Organization by impersonating its leaders, and their 2010 movie “The Yes Men Fix the World” in which they set up fake websites pretending to represent big business, now take on the right-wingers who deny the human factor in the current climate. Corporations with interests in oil and coal refuse to believe that people—namely the corporate entities that drill for these minerals—are a principal factor in global warning, a phenomenon that could raise temperatures dramatically and lead to an ever worsening spiral of hurricanes and tsunamis. As the two principals, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, explain, when the sun shines on the polar ice caps, the sun reflect off them, which sends cooling temperatures around the world. But when the polar icecaps are melting down, the sun can no longer accomplish this feat, leading the planet to roast.
But who’s interested? The tricks of Mother Nature seem too abstract and too remote by the world’s population, thereby allowing the politicians to ignore the threat and to concentrate on the felt needs of the people rather than their real needs. The Yes Men are not able to change the world, nor may they accomplish even a little beyond entertaining us in our theater seats, but they try. And they fail more than they succeed.
Of the two, Andy is first among equals, making Mike a necessary soul brother and loyal follower. Andy, who resembles David Letterman more than a young Buddy Hackett is, like his partner, a middle-aged man who is trying to keep his rebellious spirit alive by performing feats that are entertainments for the people in the vicinity but do not go over well with the authorities like the local police and Coast Guard. In taking on big oil like Shell, fat-cat lobbyists like the Chamber of Commerce, the financial powers of Wall Street and the look-the-other-way U.S. government, they open with a demonstration in the water, wearing business suits, accenting the work of some accomplices in blimp suits designed allegedly to protect the users against global disaster.
As funny as this demo is, though, nothing can outmatch Andy’s posing as a spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s deep-pocket lobby in favor of corporate interests, announcing a carbon tax on polluters and promising to use natural device like solar panels to eliminate the need for oil by 2030. For a short time, news channels believed the hoax, announcing that beyond all prediction, Big Business now joins environmentalists in diminishing the need for drilling. They travel to Uganda to meet Chandia Kodili, accompanying her to a U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen, returning home to capture videos of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The most unbelievable activity of the two partners together with two members of the Indian community in Arizona is to infiltrate a Homeland Security conference, getting staid establishment people to stand up, head to the walls, and dance as they at a wedding doing the Bunny Hop.
One wonders how these two, who are employed by universities, get the time and money to travel around the world. Finances are not discussed in this often hilarious documentary. So far as we can see now, neither the hundreds’ strong Occupy Wall Street movement nor the activities of these two fun guys have resulted in a moratorium on oil drilling, but success or failure aside, these guys have fun and so do we watching them from our comfortable theater seats.
Unrated. 91 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B+
Overall – B+
