Yes Man

Peyton Reed spends the first half on a checklist: Korean classes, guitar, a bungee jump, a scooter. The romance with Allison and the questioning of the rule are pushed into the closing stretch, so the middle plays as a catalogue. The engine is superstition, not goodwill: Carl is warned that breaking his covenant brings punishment. The guitar lessons pay off once, when he talks a man off a ledge with Third Eye Blind’s “Jumper”; digital sales of the song spiked afterwards. Danny Wallace’s book records a real year in London, where he produced BBC radio and began because a stranger on a bus told him to say yes more. The film swaps that bus for a crowded seminar and the producer for a Los Angeles loan officer, handing the story a doctrine and a guru the book never had. Jim Carrey took no fee, only a share of the gross, and broke three ribs on the bar pratfall after changing the move mid fall to get all four limbs into frame. A good fit if you want the rule broken by the end, the film arguing that an automatic yes is no choice either. Not a fit if you came for the London, the bus and the BBC producer of the book; none of the three survives.