YES MAN:Directed by Peyton Reed. Starring Jim Carrey, Terence Stamp, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, Rhys Darby, Danny Masterson 15A cert, gen release, 104 min ***
WHAT WOULD you say to a high-concept comedy in which Jim Carrey decides to say "yes" to every question he is asked? Now, that's not very nice. Try and be positive.
As it happens, Yes Man turns out to be a surprisingly tolerable piece of work. Very loosely based on the non-fiction book by British comedian Danny Wallace, this unhurried film finds Carrey in comparatively restrained form and it makes good use of its fine supporting cast. It's not saying much, but Yes Man might just be Jim's best comedy - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is uncategorisable - in the past 10 years.
The rubber-faced Canadian plays a bank employee shouldering a hundredweight of anxieties and neuroses. Depressed by his job, unhappy at the failure of his marriage, he has taken to shutting himself off from society. One day, for no convincing reason, he attends a seminar hosted by messianic self-help guru Terence Stamp and elects to take the path of unthinking acquiescence. After a few early mishaps, his life begins to improve.
So it's another cheesy comedy of redemption? Well, to an extent. But it's also a variation on that genre in which the current manifestation of Goldie Hawn - Hawn herself in the early 1970s, of course - introduces a suited wage-slave to the joys of kooky non-conformity.
The consistently charming Zooey Deschanel (a dubious 18 years younger than the male lead) grabs the role by its frizzy hair and manages to make something fresh of it. Allison may ride a scooter, paint bad pictures of owls and play in a band called Munchausen by Proxy, but she has a gravity to her that earlier incarnations of that role were rarely allowed.
Rhys Darby, associate of Kiwi pranksters Flight of the Conchords, is better still as the hero's nerdy, good-natured boss, but it is something of a shame that Warner Brothers allowed the character's twin enthusiasms - Harry Potter and 300 - to be emanations of, yes, Time Warner. Who'd have thought that nice little company would be so shameless?
