YES, GOD, YES is a very, very short feature length film, without credits it’s only an hour and 11 minutes long, and IMDB describes it with the following: “After an innocent AOL chat turns racy, a Catholic teenager in the early 00s discovers masturbating and struggles to suppress her new urges in the face of eternal damnation.” It stars Natalie Dyer, who you may know more as Nancy on Stranger Things, Alisha Boe, who you may know more as Jessica on 13 Reasons Why, and Timothy Simons, who you may know more as Jonah Ryan on the political and fictional HBO TV series Veep. You’ve probably already guessed the message behind the movie, which is religions may take sexual awakenings a little too seriously and the more you try and suppress these feelings the more negative repercussions they may have later in life. These religions rules on sex also makes a shit ton of hypocrites. It’s a simple tale that isn’t particularly memorable, no more than a one time watch, has solid performances, especially from Ms. Dyer, says what it needs to say in two climax (pun intended…sort of) scenes, and then it just ends. Oh…right before it ends it has this great Titanic car sex scene joke, but it’s more of an inside one, as the main character reminds me of a friend that is obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio, so you might not find the scene as funny as I did. I’m at a loss for words as the movie wasn’t that long, I am not religious at all (I’m an Athiest) and I do believe that some religious sects put too much emphasis on sex being bad.
Yes, God, Yes combines perspectives on institutional hypocrisy and personal maturing, and does a fair job, although the film could’ve been a bit longer to hammer some of those points home. Far from a preachy or even aggressive attack on those it discredits, it’s a movie that’s heartfelt and tempered in its approach. The two scenes I talked about previously involved Dyer’s character escaping from this weekend church retreat she’s on, going to a bar and meeting a much older woman that was in a similar situation of hers years ago, and then a final “what did I learn on this retreat” speech that was subtle enough not to cause a ridiculous over the top comedic scene that a bunch of other straight laced comedies would’ve been lazy and just went for. The film is written and directed by Karen Maine from her 2017 short film of the same name. I never saw the short film, but I’m guessing that it probably didn’t need to be made into a feature length one, and it was probably just get distributed to a wider audience. The movie does set the mood and tone of the 2000’s perfectly, right down to the old Nokia cell phones where the only thing you could really do on them other than call people is to play the Snake game. It’s a fast watch, but I think this movie is geared more toward those kinds of individuals that dealt with something similar. For me it was only okay, I barely went to church growing up, and now when someone brings up going to an establishment, I speak of my believes, firmly planting my foot on the ground and say: No, God, No.
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