Not a total "No," but "Yes Day" strains for wackiness

Yes Day (2021)


In a world not known to many, parents can give in to their children—thanks to the wish-fulfillment book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld—by saying “yes” to everything, within reason, all for one day. “Yes Day,” director Miguel Arteta’s screen adaptation, proves good intentions and a lack of cynicism can take a movie only so far. Arteta has gathered together a likable cast, too, but the comedic set-pieces are not particularly funny to be worth the comic strain by the actors. Despite the actors' committed energy and some nuggets of truth about parenting styles, this blandly sweet for-the-whole-family comedy just feels like any other wacky sitcom on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel that just so happens to star Jennifer Garner and an against-type Edgar Ramírez. On second thought, it's like "The Purge" for families.


Garner and Ramírez are well-cast and do share an easy chemistry together as bad-cop/good-cop parents Allison and Carlos Torres. Before kids, they were used to always saying “yes” on a whim to add sky-diving and rock-climbing to their new adventures. Now that they have teenager Katie (Jenna Ortega), pre-teen boy Nando (Julian Lerner), and young Ellie (Everly Carganilla), saying “no” has become the new practice. After a parent-teacher conference that makes Allison realize her three children see her as an uptight, no-fun drill sergeant, she and Carlos are suggested a “Yes Day” by the free-wheeling guidance counselor/football coach (Nat Faxon). A 24-hour day where their three kids make up the rules might be good for the Torres family, until Katie proposes a bet. If Mom says “no” to anything during this day, then Katie will get the green light to attend a Coachella-like music festival called Fleekfest with her friends, but if Katie loses, Mom gets to go as the festival chaperone. 


Director Miguel Arteta has had a varying career out of making dark and/or offbeat character-based indies (2000’s “Chuck & Buck,” 2002’s “The Good Girl," 2011’s “Cedar Rapids”) and, more recently, broad mainstream comedies (2014’s “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and 2020’s “Like a Boss”). Arteta is back to directing in that latter category, and while his first adaptation of a children’s book about a day that stars Jennifer Garner turned out to be a pleasant surprise, this one not as much. The script by Justin Malin mostly amounts to a series of “yes” adventures with Allison and Katie’s mother-daughter dynamic as the main conflict. As one might imagine, what the kids force the parents to do is all very child-minded, like eating a sickening amount of ice cream for breakfast until one of them gets diarrhea, or going through a car wash…with the windows down. Hopefully, these brats are paying for the bill to kill the mold in their minivan. The family even goes to the park and partakes in a big game of Kablowey, a water balloon game combining capture the flag and paintball, which brings out Allison’s competitive side; in no time, the kids have somehow put an ad online about a casting call for a reality show to get others to join. This should be a fun day, culminating at the Torres homestead where the son throws a Nerd Party and turns the house into a volcano of sudsy lava. It’s this kind of shouty, lamely juvenile destruction that will just make any clean freak roll their eyes and cringe in horror or act as contraception to childless viewers.


As high-concept of a comedy as you can get—for whatever that’s worth—a movie called "Yes Day" should be able to take the fun and silly route. But what if it was fun and kept both feet in the real world? Even when something silly might earn a light chuckle, it is very mild. Director Arteta does keep the pace brisk, and it is refreshing to see a bilingual family in the limelight. Jennifer Garner can be wonderful, and she is definitely game for anything, even if it means getting shrill and cartoonish in a childish fight against another grown-ass woman to win her 14-year-old daughter a pink stuffed gorilla at a Six Flags carnival game. The less-frantic and forced moments where Garner gets to prove her innate maternal instincts with the actors playing her children are much more effective. Never given the chance to perform broad, goofy comedy before, Edgar Ramírez does get called upon to cut loose from his more deadly serious roles and mug a ton as fun-loving dad Carlos. Besides getting chased by birds and hurting his crotch by landing on a tree branch, Ramírez does get to “pop it” within the first five minutes when his youngest starts twerking, so that’s something. If anyone gives the most consistently grounded performance throughout, it is Jenna Ortega (2020’s “The Babysitter: Killer Queen”), as eldest child Katie, who’s always natural without pushing too hard. It’d be very easy to make a pun, like “Say ’No’ to ‘Yes Day,’” but “Yes Day” is more benign and forgettable cotton candy than, say, a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad experience. 


Grade: C


Netflix is releasing “Yes Day” (86 min.) to stream on March 12, 2021.

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