THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD (France/UK/USA 2009) ***1/2
Directed by the Yes Men

Imagine Sacha Baron Cohen (BORAT) with a heart of gold, fooling the world and doing right.  THE YES MEN are hoaxsters with the mostest, mainly for the reason that they want to fix the world.

THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is an uplifting entertaining documentary centering on two men who call themselves the Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, in real life Jacques Servin & Igor Vamos).  They conceive several pranks on major corporations and governmental agencies and prey the most despicable ruthless companies.  They pretend to be their key representatives, create a fictitious website, wait to be invited to conferences then offer solutions to fix the problems the companies had created.

In the film they pose (respectively) as executives from Exxon, Dow Chemical, Halliburton and the H.U.D. They give faux corporate interviews pretending to be DOW executives in which they supposedly announce setting up a $12 billion fund for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster that killed 1,773 people. The BBC fell for this prank and aired the faux interview. This caused DOW’s stock plummet. The mindless though winning heroes celebrate their power, but fail to realize that most of DOW’s stock is held by pension funds; in other words, regular working class retirees. The dynamic duo conveniently found a few such victims who claimed to enjoy the hoax and its impact on DOW’s stock.

The film illustrates the amount of effort the duo undergoes to stage any one particular hoax.  Their presentations are professionally done and impressive.  This film flows so smoothly that the audience is unaware of the hard work gone into making it – from the multiple shooting locations, to the music, narration and continuity.

But Andy and Mike, as they prefer to be called in the film, admit their limitations in their ploy.  Their film works more as informative entertainment than anything else.  Still, their projects, just as this film will, bring the attention of the world to the knowledge of the disasters and how little responsibility companies or government agencies are willing to take.  Ironically, as this film publicizes the Yes Men, their future exploits will be minimalized by the fact that the world will be more aware of them.