The opening credits for "The Informant!" have this cheesy 70s-style look! The movie also has a campy score by Marvin Hamlisch! Who knew he was still alive?! Plus there are separate cameos from both of the Smothers Brothers! (One of them plays a judge! The other, I'm not sure because I didn't recognize him when he appeared earlier in the film! Or maybe I dozed off!) What the hell was Steven Soderbergh thinking?! The trailer made it seem like this would be wildly funny! However, it's not! It actually ends up in a rather sad place! Okay, I'll stop with the exclamation points now!
Matt Damon wore a lame mustache and put on some pounds to play Mark Whitacre, who blew the whistle on a price-fixing scandal at Archer Daniels Midland in the early 90s (which makes me wonder why it looks and sounds more like the 70s). We find out as we go along that there's more than meets the eye. Mark's off-the-wall narration isn't just a sign that he's a goof. Damon plays it very well; the acting in general is fine. The movie could have been a lot better, but the whole thing just falls kinda flat as we learn what else Mark Whitacre was up to and why. My grade: B-minus! Okay, one more exclamation point.
Reminder: there's a link on the home page that leads to a list of my grades for every movie I've seen in 2009.
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