God, I wanted to love this film. Two pranksters take on the WTO, getting invited to conferences to present (as reps of world trade) on globalization in some wonderfully twisted provocations. The actual pranks are quite good–a speech lamenting the Civil War in America, for instance, because normal market forces would have eventually and more peacefully evolved from unpaid labor (shipped to a new country) into efficiently-paid labor forces kept in their own cheap homes/countries (while the corporations run the forces from afar).
Three solid speeches/pranks, and lots and lots of filler. The pranksters hang out and talk, inanely, about how they’re prepping the prank. We see them sleep, or shop for the right suit. I was so sad to see such lousy, sloppy filmmaking for a subject–and a mode of satiric intervention–I find so important.
1. Back to documentaries–here’s a good example of a bad one.
2. And they remind you why Michael Moore is actually one hell of a talent. His ability to shape agit-prop narrative, to entertain as he attacks…. I wish I could recommend “The Yes Men,” but you’d be much better revisiting Moore’s tv show “The Awful Truth.”
It’s too bad this film sucked. But the Yes Men pulled a good one lately by pretending to speak for Union Carbide, apologizing for Bhopal and pledging $12 billion to the survivors and families of those killed by that company. The BBC were suckered by it, despite the chosen name for the spokesman: Jude Finisterra (ha!)
From Channel 4 (UK): In December 2004, The Yes Men spoofed the BBC. Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum posed as Jude Finisterra, spokesman for Dow Chemicals, announcing on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster that the company would pay $12 billion to clean up the disaster caused by its acquired holding Union Carbide. It took a few hours for the spoof to be discovered, during which time Dow Chemicals’ share price took a plunge on the German stock market. It is a shame that this trick came too late for inclusion into this low budget documentary about the Yes Men collective. It really needed it. As it is, the film is two (at a push, three) satirical set-pieces stretched far too thinly into a feature.