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This past summer, while trying to confirm rumors of a Transformers 2 love scene between Megan Fox and Megatron, we came across a review by Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts over at AICN. While we were disappointed to learn nobody would be putting the "tro" in Megan, the review made us laugh. We reached out to him to see if he'd consider reviewing movies we barely give a shit about for Cracked. Instead, he sent this review of a goofy Matt Damon movie we were sort of considering giving a shit about. Enjoy. The Informant! was not the movie I was sold. It's hard to say whether that's part of Steven Soderbergh's plan, considering the events of the movie, or whether it's yet another example of marketing selling pretty lies to make sure opening weekend is nice and fat. Like how X-Men: Wolverine and Muttonchops McGee was like, "Hey, Wolverine headbutts a helicopter and Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool! C'mon in, it'll be awesome!" We went in and it was more like, "Hey, some hairy crybaby was banging Sacajawea until Cotton Weary snuffed her, and then Ryan Reynolds wore red sweatpants for two minutes."
According to the trailer, The Informant! is a goofy farce about Fat Damon bungling while Sam Beckett facepalms every three seconds and mutters "ho boy!" It's most definitely not that. Much like Soderbergh's career, the film defies easy categorization, and is all the more rewarding for it. The only slot you can easily fit the film into is "Best Scott Bakula movie." Farewell and adieu, Necessary Roughness, you had a good run at the top. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a goofy biochemist with a pornstache, hair-helmet and 40 extra pounds hanging over his belt. He's a good enough guy, working a lucrative job in the corn industry. His ambitions steer him away from science and into the business side, where he finds corporate life to be unsavory. He decides to go to the feds about an international price-fixing scheme. But Mark Whitacre is not at all what he seems.
Because of that trailer--and Damon's puffy, ruddy appearance--some might expect the film to be Soderbergh comedically riffing on Michael Mann's The Insider, but what unfolds is a a smart, sprawling story, set in a 90s that looks like the 80s and sounds and feels like the 70s--complete with gaudy purple titles and a gleefully cornball score by Marvin Hamlisch. The score might as well be wearing its own hair helmet and a poor fitting suit with shoulder pads sewn because it might be the most effective character in the film. There's plenty of low-key fun to be found beneath the orangey-brownish sheen of The Informant! just in case "Man, Marvin FUCKING Hamlisch piano'd the FUCK out of this movie SHIT YEAH" isn't the gavel-banger done-deal of a recommendation some (awesome) people might think it is. One of Soderbergh's more interesting choices was to pepper the supporting cast with quality comedians, but cast them against type. Patton Oswalt isn't a raging, gravy-flecked gnome; Paul F. Tompkins isn't reviewing This Week in Britney Spears Vagina; Tony Hale isn't ... OK he's still pretty much Buster Bluth from Arrested Development.
But the real surprise is The Soup's Joel McHale, who nails just the right tone of subtle astonishment and bemused sympathy. If there's any character the audience is going to identify with, it's going to be McHale. (Quick side note: How is it that of all the hosts of Talk Soup, Skunk Boy John Henson is the only one who's yet to ascend to Hollywood stardom? The last time I saw him, he was reviewing Fergie's camel-toe at the Grammys on the TV Guide Channel. Dear Skunk Boy's agent: This is bullshit and you suck.)
The Informant! is a funny film, in its own subtle way. That is to say if you thought Transformers 2: Car Car Binks and the Truck Nuts of Doom was clever for including a farting alien jet, you might want to stay home. For the rest of us, the face of the Bakula should make you laugh all by its hangdog lonesome. One minute he looks like a young Homer Simpson wearing Sam Donaldson's Hershey's Shell hairpiece. The next he looks like Bogart sucking a lemon made of farts.
The story goes in more than a few unexpected directions. A lot of the fun comes from discovering the twists as our befuddled FBI agents do. That's probably the film's neatest trick: The use of narration as something a little less than reliable. That's not to say Damon is openly lying to you whenever he starts in with the VO. But the banal, constantly derailing-train-of-thought he drives all movie long is fantastic, casually deceptive and accidentally enlightening. And when the film finally downshifts from light-and-fluffy to sad and pathetic, that VO is what provides the punch. This isn't one of Soderbergh's greatest, but it might be among his most likable films. While people keep comparing it to The Insider due to the subject matter and the based-on-a-true-story nature of the story, it has more in common with the Coen Bros' Burn After Reading. It's not as relentlessly mean-spirited and brutal as that film, but it deals with hapless characters in way over their heads, struggling comically to stay above water. But unlike Burn, not everybody drowns miserably in their own mediocrity. It's essentially a feel-good flick about losers, spectacularly losing, with a wry little grin its face. Check out more from Mr. Roberts, and listen to his radio show over at www.cortandfatboy.com. |
Dear God I kinda love your reviews, Fatboy, even if I don't always agree with them. More please.
More from this reviewer please.
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I agree!! How DARE Cracked.com review movies! And how DARE they continue to charge nothing for daily site updates! I'M INFURIATED!!!!
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Great review. Hire this man.
@Mold: Ebaums Lite? How can Cracked be a copy of a site that steals its material? This was a neat review. I liked it, I might see if I can get this at some point.
Movie reviews for "movies you barely give a s**t about", from AICN'ers no less? Cracked must be that desperate to get away from the EBAUMS LITE moniker that it would resort to this sort of filler material. I guess I should be happy that there are no MSPAINT drawn c**ks on the images ala Perez Hilton.
The review was great, but Wuzzman16's comment is the icing on the cake. All in all good. Would read again.
oh my god matt damon looks exactly like me. Same stache, same haircut, I own that f**king bathing suit. And I'm in college majoring in biomedical engineering. If this is what hollywood thinks the average biological scientist looks like, they are finally learning something.
wow. Is cracked doing movie reviews now? Will celebrity gossip be next (which is used as an excuse to post images of of celebutantes) . I'm not seeing the comedy from the Transformers 2 "review" - just passive-aggressive rage and low-brow sarcasm over Bay's low-brow movies. The movie itself looks like to be one in a long-line of ironic period pieces which range in quality from Boogie Nights and Pulp Fiction to Anchorman. Did Soderbergh think that taking all-american Damon, make him riff of his image with ironic 80s/90s nostaglia, is avante garde? Maybe I should watch it (download it) and find out for myself. Also who is this Bobby Boberts other than someone who is a second banana sidekick on a afternoon drive radio zoo crew.
That was one of the best reviews I've read.
I like reviews like this since it's more real and doesn't feel like somebody phoning it in to get another paycheck. Plus, I don't mind it being on Cracked since I'd prefer it if Cracked was the only website I had to go to for the rest of my life.
Pedgerow - I dig Count Bakula as much as the next person, but really? Leonard Cohen? I have to disagree there. Tom Waits would be a far better choice. The voice is a closer match, he can sing, act, and even looks more like Cohen than Bakula does.
shouldnt there have been a punchline at the end of the article?
If they made a film about Leonard Cohen, Scott Bakula could so play him. Also, while this was perfectly well-written and not terrible or anything, I really couldn't care less about this film. There is no way in hell I will ever shift my ass to see it, unless I find myself in a situation where it's on and I would have to shift my ass to not see it. You may wonder, therefore, why I actually read this: well, I've said this before, but I know the Cracked people have better things to do than read all my comments, so I will say it again: I WILL READ ANYTHING YOU PUT UP HERE. PLEASE DO NOT ABUSE THAT POWER. I hate it when I have to read things that are bad/boring/self-indulgent/Topics pages.
Lysine price fixing. Yeah!
Well, it seemed more like an actual movie review than a comedy article. There's a place for those, but Cracked isn't it. Cracked is here to make me laugh my ass off and tell me who to vote for (Teddy Roosevelt). This article did neither. Still, I suppose it's good, as a review.
Okay, I might see it.
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