Who Writes This Stuff?

The Informant (R)

I saw The Informant last night. It has a few okay parts, but overall it blows. It isn’t funny enough to really laugh at and the story is pretty weak. There isn’t any serious conflict evident through most of the movie. I’m having trouble writing about it because it was so bland there just isn’t much to be said.

The Informant tells the story of Mark Whitacre, a real person who these things really happened to – and whose real story is probably a lot more interesting than the movie based on it. Whitacre was a high ranking executive at Archer Daniels Midland, a bioproducts firm which makes billions of dollars by manufacturing lysine from corn, in the early 90’s when the company got busted hardcore for conspiring with other similar companies around the globe to fix the world’s prices on lysine. Whitacre, at his wife’s demand, became an informant to the FBI. He wore a wire. He videotaped meetings. He made the government’s entire case against ADM. Except then they found out he was a totally wacked-out, freaky-deaky, pathological liar. He had made up a large portion of the stories he told the FBI and his business partners. Much of his background was completely fabricated. He had also been embezzling money from ADM the entire time he was cooperating with the FBI. He was right about some things, and some ADM executives went to jail for what they did, but for the most part he was just a crazy guy who liked to make up stories to impress people.

Everybody knows that guy. I know I do. I went to high school with this guy who used to tell people he had downloaded Star Wars Episode 9 on his computer. He also had a bit part in it (his uncle is George Lucas). You couldn’t see it though, because it got boring and he deleted it. Also his dad invented the dig dug. And he was a black belt in seven different martial arts (who isn’t?). One time he claimed that his head was so sensitive that a strong slap would kill him (that one I just don’t get at all).

The Informant is basically a motion picture portrait of a guy like that. It just follows him around through his regular day. Nothing particularly exciting happens. Toward the end he becomes a little bit more unstable and then it’s evident that he isn’t quite who you thought he was at the beginning, but it isn’t a huge shock.

As bizarre and delusional as that guy was, he wasn’t interesting enough to keep me entertained for 2 hours. Neither is this movie.