Contact Us Advertising Information Online exclusives Cover Story Buzz Feature In Case You Missed It Vote 2009 Boulderganic Fall 2009 Student Guide 2009 Boulder Weekly Sweet 16 Anniversary Boulderganic 2009 Summer Scene 2009 Email Newsletter Legal Services Best of Boulder 2009 Annual Manual 2009 Newspaper of the Future Kids Camp Guide 2009 Wedding Marketplace 09 Jobs available Student Guide 2008 Best of Boulder 2008 Annual Manual 2008 Join Our Mailing List
|
September 24-30, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
Comedy in unexpected places
by Dave Taylor
The devil’s in the details
by Michael Phillips
 Comedy in unexpected places
by Dave Taylor
Set in the early 1990s, The Informant! has the feel of an Austin Powers movie, from the titles to the music (here supplied by über-composer Marvin Hamlisch). It’s a movie about the evils of large corporations — in this case Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) — and what happens to whistleblowers who follow their conscience and help the government build a case against evildoers, even when they’re coworkers.
Or is it?
The Informant! tells the story of Mark Whitacre (beautifully played by Matt Damon), a senior executive turned FBI informant who worked at ADM in the 1990s. The film doesn’t shy from artistic license, though, as the opening titles warn us: “This film is based on real events, but not everything you’ll see is real, some are a fabrication. So there.”
The movie seems to be about how ADM conspires with foreign agribusiness to fix the price of lysine (a valuable amino acid extracted from corn) and how Whitacre rejects the pressure to get involved in the illegal practice. Initially, Whitacre shares with his boss, and then the FBI, that the company is being blackmailed by Japanese agricultural conglomerate Ajinomoto. Ajinomoto has planted a virus in the ADM lysine production facility and is demanding $2 million to send information on how to kill the virus and restore production levels.
The lead agent assigned to the case is FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula), and he’s another goofball too — earnest, trusting and entirely too clueless as this complicated case gradually comes apart. Some of the scenes with Shepard are astonishing, including one where he demonstrates to Whitacre how to tap a phone while at a public pay phone in a busy hotel. “There was a mix-up, we couldn’t get a room,” he explains to the alarmed ADM executive.
But as this strange, amazing and quite hilarious film leads us through the events between 1992 and 1996, we learn that the real story isn’t about ADM’s business practices or incompetent FBI agents, but about Mark Whitacre and the strange fantasy world he inhabits.
What makes this story so fascinating is that ADM really was engaged in illegal price-fixing during the early ’90s and that it was the efforts of executive Mark Whitacre that contributed substantially to the company getting into trouble, having to pay massive fines and various executives going to jail.
Whitacre was a complete goof, however, and relished his role of FBI informant, going as far as showing off the surveillance gear he was given, examining the “hidden” cameras during corporate meetings, even telling the press that he was a “person of interest” during the latter part of the investigation.
There’s also an appealing level of ambiguity in Whitacre’s relationship with his wife Ginger (Melanie Lynskey) that makes it unclear how much she understood of what was really happening versus what he was telling her as events unfolded. Though the film is set in the ’90s, she seems to be trapped in the ’70s, and their home is decorated outside the lines of what was that era’s contemporary fashion.
One of the funniest elements in The Informant! is Whitacre’s internal monologue, which demonstrates time and again that while important events were transpiring, he had completely tuned out, thinking about mundane facets of his life rather than paying attention.
Whitacre also explains some of his philosophy during the film, including how he likes to floss in the shower while having the conditioner sit in his hair. “All these time wasters,” he explains, “they really add up!”
The lighting and cinematography are perfect for this retro piece, often over-lit and overexposed. The ultimate effect is of a slightly deteriorating home movie, which, coupled with the Hamlisch music and Austin Powers-esque titles, give the film a whimsical sense that at first seems at odds with the material, but gradually fits better and better, until the film wraps.
Perhaps everything that transpires is the inevitable result of the ADM corporate philosophy of, “The customer is the enemy, competitors are our friends,” coupled with an executive who can’t differentiate between his imaginary life and reality. It’s something like
The Fountainhead meets The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Well, maybe not, but I’ll say this: The Informant! is one of the freshest, most amusing movies I’ve seen so far this year.
Dave Taylor has been watching movies for as long as he can remember and sees at least 500 films a year. You can find his longer,
more detailed reviews at www.DaveOnFilm.com or follow his movie updates on Twitter as @FilmBuzz.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
back to top
 The devil’s in the details
by Michael Phillips
From her earlier days and nights as a blogger and a pole dancer, screenwriter Diablo Cody knows a lot about the power of eyeballs, the predominance of the male gaze and the raging narcissism that feeds so many personalities, good and evil. Cody’s Oscar-winning script for Juno revealed a highly stylized comic sensibility, as well as an archfiend of cleverness behind each turn of phrase. Her second script to reach the screen is Jennifer’s Body, which, like its privileged title character both before and after demonic possession, would seem to have everything going for it.
And yet, no. Striving for horror, comedy and anti-mean-girl empowerment, built on an amusing indictment of just how far an ambitious alt-rock band might go to become famous, Jennifer’s Body wants it all. Yet the tone wavers, the direction is slackly indecisive and visually drab, and in the middle of it is a thinly conceived antagonist played by Megan Fox. Honestly, she’s a pretty bad actress. She doesn’t seem to get Cody’s sense of humor. At all.
I suppose it’s some sort of reverse-sexism, but with an estrogen-centric project like Jennifer’s Body, I expected something more, and more provocatively subversive. Jennifer is the designated pole star of Devil’s Kettle, Minn., high school life. Her BFF is Needy (Amanda Seyfried), who is nice and whose boyfriend (Johnny Simmons) is nice, too.
Jennifer is not. She is a compendium of every bullying personality trait known to young womanhood. When this sexually experienced but insecure woman becomes the victim of a satanic ritual conducted by a traveling rock band fronted by Nikolai (Adam Brody), her garden-variety nastiness becomes something else. The bait-and-switch here is simple: Flash a little skin, then sink the fangs in.
Cody hasn’t figured out how to make Jennifer’s initial loathsomeness interesting. The movie’s partially redeemed by Seyfried, who makes her character more than a repository for audience sympathy. (Her make-out scene with Fox is handled with more suspense and care than anything else in the movie.) The scary material, by contrast, doesn’t scare. The film is framed as an extended flashback narrated by Needy, who must take vengeance upon the boys who messed things up for her and Jennifer, and as it proceeds you’re thinking: I hope this isn’t just a story about a sweet kid figuring out that her stuck-up friend was toxic even before she had fangs.
—TMS, Chicago Tribune
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
back to top
|
| |
