When I walked out of the theater after seeing The Informant!, I had kind of a slimy feeling. The film is a true story, re-envisioned as a light comic farce designed to heap ridicule on the main character played by Matt Damon – the main comic idea is “can you believe this whack-job?” But later on in the movie you realize that he actually had very serious mental problems and probably snapped because of the reckless way the FBI threw him into a high-stress assignment of corporate spying. In the end I felt kind of sad for the guy, and resented his deliberate portrayal as a ridiculous clown. He struck me as a smart, sort of amoral, and very troubled individual pushed over the edge and then crucified for it.

Still, there are elements of humor in this strange tale that could have been explored in a non-exploitative way, but rather than write and create a genuinely funny and honest movie, Scott Burns and Steven Soderbergh decided instead to rely on a rather clumsy, highly manipulative score by Marvin Hamlisch designed to communicate with every note that we are watching a parade of clowns and to mechanically trigger our laughter and derision. The score is basically Hamisch’s score from Woody Allen’s Bananas, reworked and updated a little to include some Ocean’s 11 type 70’s jam sessions. But this style of music worked in Bananas because a) the dialog in Bananas is well-written and really funny, and b) Bananas actually IS an over-the-top, made-up farce that is completely ridiculous. The Informant! is the opposite: a completely unfunny farcical treatment of a real and serious story.

The humor in the film comes in two flavors. First we have all the “outrageous” things that Damon’s character Mark Whitacre does (and the corresponding reactions of the people around him.) All the best moments are in the trailer. They weren’t that funny to begin with and they are considerably less funny in the actual film because the film lacks a continuous comic structure to hold the viewers anticipation of humor and enhance key comic moments, and thus they fall flat. In addition, I was really surprised at what poor comic performances Soderbergh got out of all the supporting actors – they’re just terrible. This really hurt the film. Consider for example the incredible range of comic reactions to Dustin Hoffman’s weird behavior in Tootsie to get some perspective on how important this element is to films of this type, just how well it can be orchestrated by a master filmmaker like Sidney Pollack, and the magnitude of Soderbergh’s failure in this regard.

The second flavor of humor is Damon’s constant interior monologue, which is designed to show what a crazy freak his character is, his mind racing all over the place in the middle of serious conversations. It’s the kind of thing you chuckle at in the beginning but by mid-way through the film it’s not so funny anymore because by that point you realize that there is no real comedy in the film and these silly monologues are as good as it’s going to get.

Damon saves his character from completely drowning in this mess through his considerable on-screen charm and charisma, but he comes no where near saving this lumbering elephant of a film. I realize that The Informant! is getting widespread critical acclaim, but to me this is just another embarrassingly bad comedy in an era that will go down as a comedic dark age. Let’s hope for the Renaissance soon!