‘Yes Man’ vs. ‘Liar Liar’

In Yes Man, Jim Carrey plays a bank loan executive who can’t say “no,” said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. In Liar Liar, Carrey played a lawyer who loses his ability to lie. See any similarities? But Liar Liar was “a philosophical tour de force compared” to Yes Man, which “takes no risks, finds no inspiration and settles, like its hero, into a dull, noncommittal middle ground.”

Yes Man is “a typical Carrey vehicle,” said Moira Macdonald in The Seattle Times, and “schematically, it's a lot like Liar Liar.” But what sets Yes Man apart from Carrey’s other comedies is that he seems “a bit more relaxed than usual, and gives his co-stars room to make an impression.” And during “this season of movies crammed full with Nazis, depressed suburbanites, dying dogs and murdered politicians, I was grateful for it.”

But Carrey does cover much of the “same ground as he did in Liar Liar, said Roger Moore in the Hartford Courant. Still, Yes Man is “an often engaging romance shot through with sweetness, a movie that hangs on a handful of simple, magical scenes.” It’s just too bad “there aren't enough Bruce Almighty/Liar Liar Carrey set-pieces to give this the zing of those, his last wholly formed comedies.”

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