Thighs Wide Shut

The Informant!
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

There’s a big difference between actors and movie stars. Most movie stars blow. Matt Damon is a movie star, and yet he far from blows (he’s also Fahrvergnügen). Matty D is probably the mos endearing movie star going, and yet we take him for granted and granite. His Ocean buddies, namely Clooney and Pitt with their cocksure perma-smirks, hog all the spotlight, and yet they don’t really deserve it, at least not anymore now that they virtually play themselves from one film to the next (Vince Vaughn also suffers from the same diarrhea, and yet you people keep paying to watch him be dumb him). Well Diggty Damon may play slight variations of himself, but since he’s more of a boy next door type, obtainable to us simple folk, he is therefore someone we can easily get behind me satan. Whether he’s out-Bonding Bond as Jason Bourne, gettin serious with van Sant or having a blast in a disaster like Gilliam’s Brothers Grimm, Damon is always sharp, and as sharp as cheddar or Shannon, or even Sterling. In our humboldt opinion, he is the quintessential modern American movie star (remember, dudes like Sean Penn and Robert Downey are actors, not movie stars), and hasn’t ever been able to top his own magnificent work as the clever, calculating and Talented Mr Ripley. Until now?

Damon plays real-life whistle-blower Mark Whitacre [don’t bother clicking if you plan on seeing the film, which you probably should] in The Informant! So wait, why the exclamation mark (or is it an ‘exclamation point’?) in the title? Well, Whitacre is a slippery Tom Ripley-like character, cept he’s more awe-shucks golly-gosh, and less I’m gonna take an oar and slap you across the face with it, and Damon, playing this kinder, stoopider Ripley-like dude who’s in way over his head with this whistle-blowingness, excels like crizzzzazzy, especially spouting these funny asides about everyday life and things. + Damon’s playing the funnyman role in a movie where all the straightmen are played by funnymen (that dude from The Soup! that annoying fat guy who voiced a rat! Buster from Arrested Development! that baldy dude from 30 Rock! Biff from BTTF!!!! and although Scott Bakula isn’t a comedian, he does ruuuuuuuuule like Mercedes Ruehl!!!!!!!). All of this straight and funny is served up with a perfectly marvelous and hammy Marvin Hamlisch score, and BLAMMMM – you now sorta know, maybe not so much, why and how the film needs and has an exclamation mark/point!

But it’s not that simple, and neither is the movie itself, which does go on a bit too long even when it gets plenty interesting near the end when Damon/Whitacre keeps digging himself into a bigger hole. Credit and discredit in the same breath director Steven Soderbergh, who we deeply admire for always taking the chances that he does in moviedom, but then again, who drives us forkin nuts cause most of his movies never hit the mark (recently we were bored to tears and bored to comas with Che and The Whore Experience). Keep trying Nederbergh!! More Bubble, less burst, and of course, all the Matt Damon we can get (unless it results in Ocean’s 23-D)

Murphy’s Lawlessness: Damon as Whitacre looks egggzactly like Eddie Murphy done up in whiteface for that klisssasic SNL bit. mad creepy, yo!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Informant! tattles at a theaters near jews today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…