‘Yes Day’ Review – How To Crap On A Fun Concept

If you are a big Hollywood buff, you probably already know about the 2008 Jim Carrey comedy ‘Yes Man’, where the protagonist joins a self-help program that requires him to say ‘yes’ to everything for a year. The 2021 film ‘Yes Day’ pretty much borrows that same idea, except that the lead pair has to say ‘yes’ to everything their three kids tell them for just a day. Also, there are some ground rules.

Never have I seen a movie with so much fake acting. Each scene is so cosmetic that it feels like you are watching a badly written school play. The whole time I had an unimpressed furrow on my forehead as one predictable scene after another played on screen. The original plan was to watch the film with some company, but nobody in the family was free, which was great, because otherwise there might have been a lot of cursing directed at me for suggesting we watch this film. Anyway…

Directed by Miguel Arteta, the film stars Jennifer Garner in the lead role as strict mom Allison, who is constantly saying ‘no’ to her kids for everything, so much so that they equate her with Hitler. So when somebody suggests she try a ‘Yes Day’ with the kids, she snorts and laughs it off, until her eldest kid Katie (Jenna Ortega) scoffs about how she could never go through an entire day saying ‘yes’. A bet is born – if mom says yes to everything for a day, Katie cannot go to a music concert unchaperoned.

Just thinking about this film is making me feel sleepy, it’s how boring it was. Boring. Boring. Boring. Jennifer Garner can be adorable, but in this film, she was just an annoying mom, who gets only more annoying by the minute. There’s a lot of usual parents versus teen drama in the script that felt super awkward and contrived. Doesn’t help that the actor who plays the eldest kid has absolutely no charm whatsoever.

This movie is a lesson on ‘How to crap on a fun concept’, because while the premise sound super exciting – imagine the possibilities of having three naughty kids getting a whole day of having their parents say ‘yes’ to all their demands. The makers don’t do anything really fun out of it, except for a nice little ‘nerd party’ towards the end, which comes too late to be appreciated. There is just no chemistry between the family members, they feel like they have been picked at random and pushed together on a stage to play their parts due to some last minute emergency.

Okay, I don’t even feel like going on and on about this movie. It’s a 3/10 from me.