AGE DIFFERENCE-- hello?!!?

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I've yet to meet a straight man who legitimately WANTS kids. So no, I don't think any guy is upset over "losing" the opportunity to have kids. That's just a bonus of dating a cougar.

The love interest kind of needed to be a bit younger than him. Women at Zooey's age tend to be a bit more spontaneous than a more grounded older woman. Her attitude suited the movie. And Jim acts far younger anyway.

If they were playing as if she was 29 and he was about... 41 or 42, I don't see the problem with that sort of age gap.

And also, Jim is not 25 years older than Zooey. More like 17.

yeah, very mismatched couple, he looks like he could be her dad!

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I won't even bother reading all the other replies since the first one hit the nail on the head

It's obvious to me all the posts about the age difference are most likely from young(er) people (teens-20s)

"ANyone else find it bizarre to see Zooey playing opposite Jim? I mean he's like 25 years older than her! She should have been dating Jim Carrey's young friend. Why did they cast him as if he was 30? Totally bizarre." (Meremaiden-1)

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What a difference the generations make. Here we have Meremaiden, who sounds like a mere stripling of a maiden, and she is totally outraged at the very idea that two consenting adults can become lovers with a few years between them. Of course, we live in an age where movies and television shows pander to the youth market, and the idea has seeped in that anyone over 30 or 40 is over-the-hill, and should sexually crawl into a shell and die. And as we can see from the many, probably very young, voices who have agreed with Meremaiden that the times, they sure have been a'changing. The youth is conditioned to think that older adults who make it with younger ones, or who make it at all (note the "Anyone upset about the 'granny sex' gig here?" thread, on the message board. Heaven forbid anyone who is "really" old should even think about sex, and if they dare to have sex with anyone outside a few years of age from their own, they should be practically shot), are almost perverted, sick, or at least, as Meremaiden phrased it, "bizarre."

Not long ago I watched the old classic movie DODSWORTH from 1936. Here, a possibly over 20 year age difference actually hurt the marriage between a millionaire played by Walter Houston (52 years of age) and his younger wife, who wanted to go out and play more often -- which can certainly be a realistic problem in the case of a couple with a generation between them. Once the marriage hit the rocks, Houston found a new lady love, played by Mary Astor (30 years of age, at the time). Even though the age difference was even slightly greater than the one between YES MAN's Zooey Deschanel and Jim Carrey (22 years vs. 18), the pairing seemed perfectly natural. And no doubt hardly anyone from the 1930s audience thought there was anything strange going on, because what we've got are two human beings who fall in love, and any dope can figure out age can be an irrelevant factor.

Mary Astor was a leading lady perhaps most famous for playing the femme in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941). She played off Humphrey Bogart, who was in his early forties -- making the age difference between the two leads less than half of what it was for Deschanel-Carrey, but even this would no doubt be found "bizarre" by some among today's unthinking and immature crowd. Bogart famously played a romantic lead in CASABLANCA a couple of years later, at 43 -- a few years younger than Carrey, who was 46 for YES MAN. (For those keeping track, Bogart's love in CASABLANCA, Ingrid Bergman, was 16 years younger. How many from the 1943 audience do you think were outraged? Bogart, by the way, would famously go on to marry a woman 25 years his junior. Did anyone at the time really mind?) Having a leading man in his forties was perfectly natural in those days, but today, the message has been drilled into the public's mind that there is something yucky about the idea. And frankly, Bogart actually looked older at 43 than the boyish-looking Carrey of YES MAN.

Which leads us to another factor: not all people who are chronologically of the same age are of "the same age." Yes, Carrey is a little more old and wrinkled than the days when he made his first cinematic splash, but he's still good-looking, and has a nice physique. He certainly was youthful in YES MAN, even in the scenes where he was in his negative, broken down phase. When he encountered Zooey Deschanel's character at the gas station, and then when they first kissed, it looked perfectly acceptable. It certainly didn't look like a really old guy kissing a young nymph.

But reason and reality no longer comes into play. It's the very idea that two lovers with a few years between them should pair up that disturbs the brainwashed minds of today's youth. Probably the hysteria over pedophilia (which was as inexcusable "then" as it is "now," but we are now overly conditioned with the message of outrage) has something to do with this new intolerance, and expectation that older folks should know their place, and leave the sexual thoughts to those from 18-29.

Yet another sad sign of the degree of superficiality seeping into our conditioned lives. As the second respondent in this thread wisely wrote, one would expect the younger set to be more liberal and open-minded, but sometimes we must wonder if that is true with the current young generation -- who do not think, and who do not question, as it is especially the duty of the rebellious youth to do. Instead, they simply and stupidly accept the media messages they are fed. How pitiful in general, and how sad for them regarding this particular issue, as they will discover in a blink of an eye, as they start piling on the years and realize their sexual thoughts are still alive and well, no one has the right to think there should be universally-applied rules to romance, and the concept of attraction to those younger or older does not go away.

It's a movie! Don't be so serious...!