The Informant! (2009)

The trailer for this was very funny and Jack and I looked forward to seeing the whole thing, which is based on the 2000 Kurt Eichenwald book “The Informant,” the true story of Mark Whitacre, a whistle-blower in the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal. We were not disappointed. This comedy stars Matt Damon (his only Oscar was for co-writing Good Will Hunting (1997), in which he starred, but he was good in the Bourne series (2002, 2004, 2007) and great in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Good Shepard, and The Departed (both 2006)) in big glasses, a blow-dried wig, funky mustache, and continuous inner dialogue that we can hear (ADD at ADM!). The trailer showed Damon messing up right and left, but the plot was way thicker than that and I refuse to give away more to those who don't know the whole story (as we didn't). The main FBI agents are ably played by Scott Bakula (TV shows Quantum Leap (1989-93) and Murphy Brown (1993-96) among others) and Joel McHale (whom I saw the very next night starring in the new NBC comedy Community). Director Steven Soderbergh (some that I liked were his first feature, the excellent Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which won him the Palme d'Or at Cannes; Spalding Gray's monologue movie Gray's Anatomy (1996); Erin Brockovich (2000); Traffic (2000), which won him an Oscar; and Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen (2001, '04, '07), which also featured Damon) cast a number of stand-up comedians in this: Jimmy Brogan, Patton Oswalt (cables series Lucky Louie and United States of Tara), Rick Overton, Tom Papa, Paul Tompkins, Bob Zany, as well as Tommy Smothers as Dwayne Andreas, ADM's CEO, and Dick as a judge later on. Shout out to Jodi: Clancy Brown is in it, too!

UPDATE: I almost forgot. The wonderfully cheesy Marvin Hamlisch retro music was integral to the mood of the bumbling informant. It would have been a different movie without it.