‘The Informant!’ Reviews Give Satirical Flick High Marks

‘The Informant!’ movie reviews are in

Image from Wikimedia!

It looks like the critics’ choice for this weekend in theaters is “The Informant!” starring Matt Damon. I am going to go ahead and trust that the filmmakers have a very good reason for putting an exclamation mark in the title.

Personally, I find this little punctuation mark beyond obnoxious, but I am aware of the fact that I am a punctuation dork and only .02 percent of Americans are afflicted with this disease, so I will move on. Speaking of moving on, critics are weighing in on “The Informant!” as we speak.

Best pick doesn’t always mean great flick

For the  most part, critics like what they are seeing, but not enough to recommend you get some quick payday loans and see this movie right away. The Rotten Tomatoes rating is in flux, but right now it’s at 75 percent. The Metacritic score is at 61, which doesn’t sound very good until you compare it to the other choices for new films this weekend.

“Jennifer’s Body” got 29 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and so far has 0 good reviews out of 3 at Metacritic. “The Burning Plain” has a 53 percent at Tomatoes, but no one from Metacritic even bothered to review it. So, clearly, if the critics have their way “The Informant!” will be among the top earners at the box office this weekend, or at least people will spend their money on this film rather than another new release. Then again, critics haven’t gotten to watch “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” or “Love Happens” yet.

“The Informant!” movie reviews

Todd McCarthy from Variety made me chuckle. “The pic showcases an excellent performance by a chubbed-out Matt Damon as a Midwestern executive who’s so smart he’s dumb,” he wrote. Most critics, including McCarthy, also had some opinions about this punctuation situation that annoys me so. McCarthy wrote:

The exclamation point on the title and the jaunty, old-fashioned score by Marvin Hamlisch serve as immediate tipoffs as to the film’s hyperreal intentions, which will inevitably put some viewers off, but for others will provide an amusing, original angle on the sort of story that’s almost always done with an earnest sense of self-importance.

McCarthy also wrote that its “amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny” and says Damon’s performance is great, as is the cinematography.

Not exactly a breadwinner

Richard Corliss from Time Magazine says the film is a “salutory achievement” in his “The Informant!” movie review, but also notes that it’s likely it will be “a nonstarter” at the box office. He notes that Steven Soderbergh has recently done films of a similar ilk — meaning anti-Hollywood in nature — and they did not made much money,  including “Che” and “The Good German.”

But we all know money can’t buy happiness or thoughtful movie messages. Corliss, at least, walked away from “The Informant!” with at least some interesting points to ponder. What he got from “The Informant!” he writes: “People who do good or ill have complex motives for their actions, and that not everyone is knowable, instantly or ever.”