dtb Review of The Informant!

The Informant! (2009)

THE INFORMANT! It's (Darkly) Funny Because It's True!

[9/10 · 20 September 2009]

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive, and how easily drama can turn into comedy when your story's protagonist turns out to be an attention-craving doofus! That's what happens in THE INFORMANT! (TI!), Steven Soderbergh's maddening yet delightful fact-based deadpan comedy. At its best, it's rather like MICHAEL CLAYTON on laughing gas. Matt Damon shows how deftly he can handle comedy and drama as biochemist and rising young executive Mark Whitacre. His firm, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), was known as the world's supermarket, manufacturers of lecithin, lysine, sorbitol, xanthan gum (the latter being a boon to us gluten-free cooks, as it gives baked goods the springy texture that helps make cakes and cookies so yummy...but I digress...) and many other polysyllabic ingredients we usually see in itty-bitty print on food labels. Starting in the early 1990s, Mark supplied the FBI with hundreds of tapes implicating ADM in a complex price-fixing scheme. He soon finds he likes his new role of corporate whistle-blower—maybe too much. In his naiveté, Mark's willing to go to ridiculous lengths to cling to his new sense of self-importance and keep himself in the spotlight—never mind that the whole point of his mole role is to keep what he's doing on the down-low! It doesn't help that Mark has the attention span of a gnat; his hilarious stream-of-consciousness voice-overs natter on about everything from corn to neckties to polar bears, even while FBI agents are in the middle of briefing him. Scott Bakula and THE SOUP'S Joel McHale make a fine team as FBI Special Agents Shepard and Herndon, who evolve from concern and compassion (I was touched by the fact that they even carry around a holiday photo of the Whitacre family) to slow burns and outraged disillusionment as they realize Mark's not playing with a full deck. And what thanks do they get? Mark eventually tries to blame and frame the agents when he starts embezzling from ADM, even as his endless series of increasingly outrageous stories and excuses finally unravel. Those with short attention spans may find that TI!'s plot takes some keeping up with, but the emotional aspects always ring true, thanks to superb performances from the entire stellar cast, which also includes Patton Oswalt, Clancy Brown, Eddie Jemison, the Smothers Brothers (not as a team; Tom plays an ADM executive, Dick plays the judge at Mark's trial), and the ever-endearing Melanie Lynskey as Ginger, Mark's sweet, loyal, increasingly befuddled wife. Marvin Hamlisch's bright, zany score is the perfect accompaniment to Mark's increasingly nutzoid antics; in fact, it reminded me pleasantly of his score for Woody Allen's 1971 farce BANANAS. (As of this writing, it seems like everything's coming up Hamlisch at the movies; his song "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" turns up in CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS.)