Yes Day movie review: Jennifer Garner, Édgar Ramírez in a passably entertaining Netflix fam-com

A gigantic bowl of ice cream sundae for breakfast, bed-trampolining, water balloon fights and car wash with windows down — Yes Day sums up the bountiful, complete lawlessness you wish you had as a kid. Well, at least on paper. Director Miguel Arteta’s latest film on Netflix, adapted from Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenfeld’s children’s book of the same name, is all kinds of exciting on a conceptual level. Unfortunately, the outcome of it all is too lacklustre and naive for one to vicariously relive your childhood. Jennifer Garner, the 90s and aughts rom-com staple, channels her signature endearing charm as Allison Torres, a distraught mother-of-three. In the Torres household, she’s become the default bad cop to her husband Carlos’ (Édgar Ramírez) good cop. “No is part of the job,” she declares, as her kids label her a Stalin and Mussolini-esque dictator who needs to be intercepted at all costs. [caption id=“attachment_9416251” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Yes Day[/caption] A quick flashback montage introduces us and reminds her she was once the epitome of “fun,” voting “yes” to every new experience. She meets Carlos, another fellow risk-taker (it’s a PG 13 movie, so their adventures are also appropriately safe), falls in love and the two get married. But their exciting adventure-filled life soon take a hit when their kids are born. To bridge the gap between Allison’s parenting rules and the children’s rejection of them, the school guidance counsellor (Nat Faxon) suggests she bribe her kids with a “yes day,” a day when children get to call the shots and the parents need to participate, no questions asked. Her condition — one needs to earn a yes day with better grades and good behaviour. So with a few ground rules in place, the family takes off for a yes day. Katie (Jenna Ortega), the eldest of their three kids, is confident their mother will break before the day ends, and leverages this to go to a music fest unsupervised. Understandably, Allison is more scared of her daughter venturing alone at the concert than confident in her ability to say “yes” with as much abandon as her younger self. But she takes her daughter’s challenge anyway, setting the ball rolling for fun to officially begin. The rest of the film plays out exactly how you’d expect it to — Carlos gets a serious case of diarrhoea after wolfing down a family-size ice cream sundae. The predictable poop joke is mined to extract the heartiest laughs. Thereafter, the frequency and the intensity of LOL moments dip in leaps and bounds, depending heavily on Ramirez’ capability to endure crotch-hits. [caption id=“attachment_9416221” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Yes Day[/caption]

Family comedies are presumably harder to craft. Not only does it have to be relentlessly entertaining, it also needs to strike a chord with the widest possible demographic. Thus, even though it is silly and sentimental. the stakes never go higher than the pain from a toothpick prick. In his defence, Arteta injects Yes Day with as much vibrancy per frame as possible. The suburban family house is spacious and comfortable; even clutter gets an aesthetic makeover. Water balloon fights are shot in slow-motion, as tense war sequences and a contest to win a pink gorilla feels like a high-strung Masterchef Australia finale.

There’s nothing in Yes Day that you haven’t seen before — the jokes, the conflict or the resolution. The film is content in its limited ambition. But it’s the kind of family comedy that dated enough to feel nostalgic, but not so cheesy to alienate angsty millennials. Yes Day is a bonafide one-time watch, but it offers enough familiarity, gloss and overall feel-good moments to make it worth your time on a moderately difficult day.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Yes Day is currently streaming on Netflix