An early scene in The Yes Men features Mike and Andy speaking directly into the camera, explaining who the Yes Men are, and how they started.
Andy and Mike say Oui to globalization
One sneaked gay background characters who made out on the streets every Friday the 13th in the Sim Copter video game, the other switched the voiceboxes of talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls. More recently, they were asked to set up a parody site, gatt.org, that played on the World Trade Organization’s identity. When they started getting e-mail requests for speaking appearances, they presented themselves as representatives of the WTO.
Their message was generally in line with WTO policies, but carried to extremes. They would admit that they didn’t care about human rights issues, and that these sorts of issues should be measured by the economic concerns of first-world nations. One could argue that this is really the WTO’s position, but of course the WTO would never put it that bluntly.
As an activist art project, the Yes Men is inspired. It is creative, funny, relevant, and irreverent. As a film, however, The Yes Men is little more than a home movie. Michael Moore appears on camera for a few sound bites, and the movie is edited to feature length, but the bulk of the movie is just footage from three or four of their pranks. Of all the political documentaries of 2004, The Yes Men may be the least cinematic (and that’s saying a lot).