Yes Man (2008)

Image credit: Melissa Moseley

CHANGING HIS TUNE Jim Carrey is a dour man who embraces the positive in the too predictable comedy Yes Man

Carl (Jim Carrey), a loan officer so morose he needs to have his arm twisted to go for drinks with friends, is ripe for conversion by a self-help guru (Terence Stamp) who orders him to say ''yes'' to everything. Soon he's giving cash to a bum, learning Korean, talking a man off a ledge, and wooing a punk rocker (Zooey Deschanel) he would never have met without his new ''philosophy.'' This is basically a nerd-loosening-his-tie romantic comedy done in the manic-compulsive mode of Liar Liar. It has more chuckles than guffaws, though, maybe because Carrey has always been a comic actor who says yes yes yes. Literalizing that impulse only robs it of surprise. B–