leethomas-11621 Two likeable lads take on the big corporations. I loved the team that put this whole satire/show together. Their audacity is wonderful. What is missing though is more context/background to the activities of the WTO and the horrible outcomes of these activities. This would have given The Yes Men's antics more impact. Including Michael Moore footage not enough. Kudos to Herb Alpert for supporting the group. I take it they were serious about this?

nobbytatoes Mike and Andy have set out to start making people think differently about the WTO; World Trade Organization. From what started as a prank website about the WTO, mutated into Mike and Andy appearing on TV and giving lectures to people who though they are apart of the WTO. With this mistaken identity, the send out false views of the WTO, showing people how flawed and corrupted the WTO is. With the use of their phallic leisure suit and an interesting idea about recycling human excrement to make new food for third world countries, they start getting people to think; they really stir the pot at times.This is a great doco showing how the little man can still make a difference. These two men have a lot of guts for what they do, and its amazing the haven't been stopped yet. They though set out to do a lot of pranks, this is the major flaw of the film, its not that deep in information. What they do is very intelligent, but they actually don't attack the WTO itself. It would have been if instead of showing their pranks show they showed them going to the WTO and attacked them personally. Another problem is that they ultimately don't make any real change. All the organizations still treat third world countries badly and they will still continue in this manor. The only other flaw is its too short. 80mins isn't a lot of time to get a message across and they could have input a lot more information, adding a lot more depth.But this film is more food for thought than being revelatory, it shows how things are, lifting the veil to show the hypocrisies of all developed countries and their so called help towards third world countries.The Yes Men is funny and very thought provoking.

JohnSelf I was impressed with the elaborate pranks and that they were able to at least look like they were giving competent presentations. That was it. The rest of it was fairly stupid. One of the first big jokes centers around a presentation made in Finland about a ridiculous phallic employee monitoring device. I suppose we were supposed to find humor in the fact that the Finns failed to react. I think it showed more about the ignorance and stupidity of the Yes Men than the audience. Even if they hadn't pulled out the giant penis thing, I'm sure the audience wouldn't have asked any questions about the WTO's plan to monitor employees. No doubt the audience knew that the WTO would never become involved in something like that, and I can imagine it would be fairly typical for a group of Europeans to remain quiet about an American making an ass of himself in public. The most frustrating thing I found was that all the pranks that were meant to satire the WTO missed the mark completely. The Yes Men seemed to be completely uninformed about what the WTO does. I'm not sure how you can satirize something if you don't understand it. It would be sort of like making "Spinal Tap" based upon lives of circus performers. The WTO simply doesn't become involved in individual corporations, like McDonald's. So, while the idea of reconstituted feces being sold as food may be slightly amusing, it's irrelevant to the operations of the WTO, which is problematic if you're trying to poke fun at the them. In general, it's pretty much run-of-the-mill uninformed arguments you usually hear from people that denounce organizations like the World Bank or IMF with some pranks thrown in to entertain. Knee jerk liberalism with a twist, in other words. Which in my book, is equally as asinine as those that buy whatever FOX News or W is selling. On the plus side, if you don't know anything about the WTO or other cultures, you might find this amusing.

loganbell It's a shame the filmmakers do not have the same talents as the yes men. WHile the pranks are supreme -- intelligent, insightful and clever -- the same cannot be said for this movie. Instead of giving us insight into what makes these pranksters tick, the film dilly dallies for what seems like hours over the fact the fact that the yes men miscalculated the time zone (!) in Finland. In a word: Who cares about the time zone?! But, alas, the film treads water for ages. But worse than that is the fact that the movie has no sense of irony, no joie de vivre and no fun. It's just a badly made doc about an interesting subject.For people who want to see a film that makes a great uber-prank on pranksters big and small, my recommendation is the Anarchist Cookbook.