Yes Day - Light Indeed but not Heartfelt Enough as Family Movie

After rather tiring day at work, I was looking for some light movies and there was this one which was just released yesterday on Netflix and fit perfectly into that category. So without further hesitation, I immediately watch this film.

Brief Story Line

Allison (Jennifer Garner - Peppermint, 13 Going on 30 etc) and her husband Carlos Torres (Édgar Ramírez - The Undoing mini series, Point Break 2015 version etc) were previously fun people who were adventurous. However, when they started to have kids, they always said No to protect their 3 children, the 14 yr old Katie (Jenny Ortega - The Babysitter: Killer Queen, You TV series season 2 etc), Nando (Julian Lenner) and the youngest Ellie (Everly Carganilla).

Feeling a bit stressed and disappointed for being branded not fun and as advised by a school employee, Allison and Carlos decided to give their kids a Yes Day where they could ask for anything and the parents would never say No. Obviously with some ground rules the kids have to follow.

And so what would happen during this Yes Day for the Torres family? Find them all in this light family movie.

End of Brief Story Line

When I watched this movie from the early part, it certainly looked fun, especially when the parents Allison and Carlos started to always say "No" to their children as opposed to always saying "Yes" before they were married. And to be frank, the young newcomers played their roles convincingly as the children, especially Everly Carganilla who is very adorable. Meanwhile Jenny Ortega as the most experienced among the 3 children was OK as the typical teenage girl.

The story itself was quite simple with nothing exceptional. I also noticed from the maturity rating that it was categorized as 7+, which means the movie was considered safe enough for kids to watch without their parents. Although I personally felt it should be PG so young kids would understand the implication of a Yes Day. If you have watched the movie and you get the idea of what a "Yes Day" meant, you would realize that there would be consequences of having such day. 

This movie was adapted from a children's book of the same title written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It was directed by Miguel Arteta who was no stranger to few comedy movies such as The Good Girl, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day etc. However, I could not help feeling that the movie lacked a bit of something. Yes I had few laughs but somehow the story was not too compelling for me. It seemed like a great idea but it just seemed like the film concentrating too much on the chaos resulted from kids planning the day. Even if there were one or two scenes to show the parents children relationship, they felt a bit lacking emotionally.

Credit still has to be given to Jennifer Garner who showed her seriousness to play her part. I also saw during the closing credit that she was one of the producers of this movie, which meant she is quite passionate about this project. Same could not be said though about Édgar Ramírez who looked like he did not seem too committed with his role. Btw, there was a brief mid closing credit scene that was a bit random and supposed to be fun, but I did not find it to be funny at all.  

Overall I thought this movie did not give too good impression to me. It was light, but the chaos resulted from the Yes Day was a bit too much. And despite having few comedians in supporting roles like Fortune Feimster as Jean the Paramedic, or Nat Faxon as the school employee, even a famous singer H.E.R, but personally I did not feel they gave added value to the film. In the end, this movie only managed to give me few laughs but not memorable enough and did not have sufficient heartfelt moments. But if you still want to give this movie a try, you are welcome to do so.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars