Movie Review: The Informant!

This movie really disappointed me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I like Matt Damon. He is a great actor—the Bourne Films alone are a testament to his prowess and capability. The Informant, however, just didn’t have that it factor—in fact, it didn’t have much of anything.

The Informant is the true story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a corporate whistle-blower in the corn industry. A bit naively, he sets off to single-handedly right the industry after he becomes sickened by their involvement in some corporate no-no’s, like price fixing. Wackiness ensues, especially as Whitacre’s inherent oddities start to take a turn for the worse.

I could say more, but I feel it would be giving this film more than it deserves. Plain and simple: This movie was boring. It was supposed to be a comedy, but I simply didn’t laugh. The bumbling, bipolar, corn-loving Indiana country boy, Mark Whitacre, caught me as terribly uninteresting. I didn’t connect with him, and if you don’t connect with him, you aren’t going to connect with the movie. The mental instability certainly came blaring at me, but even the dark twist to the comical didn’t liberate my funny bone.

The pace was slow, dreadfully slow, and nothing really seemed to happen. The script was dry, the delivery dull. The classic lead-in music seemed to point to when I should have been laughing, or to when the supposed humor was building, but all it just made me feel as though I were missing something important—like there was an elephant staring at me, yet I somehow couldn’t see him. If there was wit and wisdom to be found, I certainly didn’t look hard enough then.

The style was of note, though, because it was certainly different from the usual fair. The whole movie felt like a step back in time—a throw-back to some other age in both style and execution. It had this upbeat, small-town sort of feel to it, which was inherently counterbalanced by the peculiarities of Whitacre and the events surrounding him.

Pick or pass? I’d say pass. There are better comedies—and better Damon flicks. Excuse me while I pop in one of the Oceans films and rock myself to sleep now.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars

~ by Chris G. on March 21, 2010.