Take the prankster chutzpah of Sacha Baron Cohen. Pair it with Michael Moore's crusading lefty outrage. Add two frazzled-looking guys in cheap suits. What do you get? The Yes Men, globe-trotting "culture jammers" who pose as corporate mouthpieces - and cause all sorts of mischief for all sorts of people in power.
In 2003 they released "The Yes Men," a documentary tracking their exploits as bogus representatives of the World Trade Organization. Among other things, they promoted "reBurgers" made of recycled feces and a gold-lame executive jumpsuit with an inflatable phallus. In their risible new sequel, "The Yes Men Fix the World," they ramp up the stakes along with the production values, yielding a slicker, nervier and more sincere film.
They're no longer content to just spoof the stuffing out of monolithic business interests. Instead, they want to change things. We're told as much near the end, after Yes Men acolytes have circulated copies of a faux New York Times: "If a few people at the top can make the bad news happen, why can't all of us at the bottom make the good news happen for real?"
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The guy talking is Mike Bonanno, the Yes Man who narrates "Fix the World" and sticks behind the scenes. His partner in the spotlight is Andy Bichlbaum, an angular, nervy fellow who shows up to speak whenever one of the group's fake Web sites - mocking Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton - draws an invitation to speak at a convention or press event.
The film's opening shows Bichlbaum in December 2004, as he prepped for a spot with the BBC. They thought they'd landed an interview with a Dow official named Jude Finisterra. In fact, he was a world-class liar who calmly declared that Dow, recently merged with Union Carbide, had decided to take "full responsibility" for the 1984 Bhopal disaster and planned to spend $12 billion on victim restitution.
It got quite a reaction: Dow stock lost $2 billion in 20 minutes. By any measure it was the Yes Men's biggest and boldest hoax - though they came close recently when Bichlbaum "announced" a position shift on climate change for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber filed suit.
