Tag Archives: your numbed comfort zone

Yes Man

Return of the Wednesday dollar movie, yay. Less yay is that I still haven’t seen Friday the 13th’s remake yet. But that’s okay, because I will. What I did see was Yes Man, a very much by-the-numbers romantic comedy in which Jim Carrey meets the beautifully-voiced and pleasantly quirkily-featured Zooey Deschanel by virtue of saying yes to everything that comes his way.

Jim, you see, is this sad sack of a guy who got divorced several years ago and has pretty much given up. Whatever he does not commit to experiencing cannot disappoint him, so he commits to nothing. Except, he runs into an ex-coworker at an extremely low point and gets talked into a seminar about the power of “Yes!” From there forward, his life turns into a whirlwind of adventure and romance that has only one possible flaw. Well, okay, maybe two. I’d hate to spoil them, though.

Both the movie’s apparent message and especially its underlying actual message have a lot to recommend them, for anyone who is in shutdown mode. Pleasant though it would be, the world won’t come to you. (And I say that as someone for whom it actually did, once.) If you’re happy, that’s as far as it goes, and more power to you. But if you’re not, you pretty much have to stop waiting and get out there outside your numbed comfort zone and find the good things. And it will suck part of the time, but without the risk, you won’t ever get out of the hole. Also, though, you can swing too far in that direction. So don’t do that one either?

I guess my point is, if I didn’t think pretty highly of my present circumstances, I would find this movie inspiring instead of merely competently funny and exceedingly fun.