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The Informant!
Metascore
66 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 37 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 37
  3. Negative: 0 out of 37
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    As Soderbergh lovingly peels away veil after veil of deception, the film develops into an unexpected human comedy. Not that any of the characters are laughing.
  2. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    91
    Its got a deliciously audacious and cheeky tenor.
  3. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Tasha Robinson
    91
    The Informant! chooses to earn its exclamation point with giggles as well as shock, and the results are thoroughly entertaining.
  4. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    90
    It is Mr. Soderbergh's insistence on seeing the A.D.M. scandal as a collective tragedy rather than as another white-collar crime that gives the movie force, resonance, feeling.
  5. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    There is devilish fun in this look into 1990s white-collar crime. But the jokes are the kind you choke on.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    88
    More than any previous screen role, this one affords Damon a chance to work his sly comic chops.
  7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Joe Williams
    88
    By turning a whistle-blower into a tragicomic figure, Soderbergh sustains our interest in a complicated financial scheme and rewards it with a kickback of ghastly laughs.
  8. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    83
    Damon is an agile comic performer, and Soderbergh knows how to serve him up without losing sight of the ultimate seriousness behind it all.
  9. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    80
    With composure so out of fashion these days in the public square, Steven Soderbergh's adamantly restrained The Informant! arrives like a cleansing tonic.
  10. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    A whimsical and light-hearted spin on a serious story of corporate whistleblowing.
  11. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    More amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious, but is never boring.
  12. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    75
    Bakula is the ideal surrogate for a perplexed audience. Similarly, Whitacre's exasperated wife, played by Melanie Lynskey, is drily funny.
  13. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Amy Biancolli
    75
    Matt Damon's old-fashioned, brilliantly calibrated character turn as a corporate schnook-turned-whistle-blower; and Marvin Hamlisch's retro-groovy score. For the movie's first hour or so, the pair of them together make for four-star entertainment. The last half hour, not so much.
  14. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    75
    Soderbergh takes a deadly serious news story and amplifies and colors it to the point of outrageousness. The results aren't always consistent, but they are undeniably compelling.
  15. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    With Steven Soderbergh at the helm, this has become a whimsical, semi-comedic romp, complete with a score by Marvin Hamlisch that recalls kitschy '70s TV shows, cutesy captions, and a tongue-and-cheek approach to the entire story.
  16. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Mark Salisbury
    75
    A comic tour de force from Damon, who gained 30lbs and sports an unflattering moustache as the dishonest and delusional Whitacre. But it's a performance that never loses sight of the man behind the lies.
  17. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    75
    The Informant! may be a gadfly of a movie, but it's not without bite.
  18. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    75
    It wouldn't stick in the memory were it not for Matt Damon's audacious, baggy-pants portrayal of corporate whistle-blower Mark Whitacre, the antihero of this reality-based farce.
  19. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    75
    In The Informant!, that brain -- screwy and yet capable of doing important undercover work -- free-associates like Ellen DeGeneres on a swing through Walmart. Cute, but as even Agent 86 would say in "Get Smart": Missed it by that much.
  20. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Jessica Baxter
    70
    It's not a perfect film, but it's definitely the Soder-side I prefer.
  21. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    70
    Not for the first time in his career, Soderbergh has made a mainstream film that is simultaneously a thought experiment.
  22. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    70
    By the end, Soderbergh's movie subverts common belief far more effectively than some of the fantasy movies knocking around this summer. It's a vertiginous experience that grows increasingly hilarious, and the joke is on us.
  23. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    Unfortunately, every laugh is bludgeoned nearly to death by Marvin Hamlisch's jokey score of neo-James Bond riffs and 70s sitcom melodies; I liked the movie quite a bit, but by the end I felt as if I were at a live TV show with a blinking sign ordering me to LAUGH.
  24. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    67
    Maybe Soderbergh felt as though he already did a straight-ahead version of this story with "Erin Brockovich" and therefore decided to revamp the tune in the key of Richard Lester.
  25. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    The movie's fun to watch, but you can tell it was a lot more fun to make, and that's a problem. The party stays up on the screen; down here, it's been over for a year.
  26. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    60
    Has two aces going for it: Soderbergh's poking at the maze­like holes in American business and Damon's whirling dervish performance.
  27. Empire
    Reviewed by: Kim Newman
    60
    It sets out to be less pompous than similar films, which inevitably means it feels less substantial. While amusing rather than hilarious, it ought to establish Matt Damon as a star character actor.
  28. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    60
    The Informant! may end up closer to the non-starters. Its lunacy is too deadpan, and its denouement too drawn out, to appeal to those who liked the Bourne movies, or, for that matter, the Gore. But it's worth seeing, and a salutary achievement.
  29. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    60
    Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny.
  30. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    50
    The whole film, a comedy about crime and mental illness, seems at war with itself.
  31. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    50
    The truth, however, is that for much of Soderbergh's film, it's all as yawn-inducing as its premise.
  32. Slate
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    50
    Soderbergh whiplashes his viewers between two contrasting mental states that are best described as "jaunty" and "wrenching."
  33. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Keith Uhlich
    40
    Director-cinematographer Steven Soderbergh's indifference to the material is palpable and of a piece with his deathly dull output of late.
  34. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    40
    This is yet another of Soderbergh's "exercises in style," which means he has one big idea and sticks to it. He makes the space shallow and ugly (faces are bathed in orange) and adds groovy sixties titles and Marvin Hamlisch music.
  35. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    40
    Unlike the director's usual organic efforts--in which great style never results in overstylized--The Informant! feels overamped from start to shrugging finish.
  36. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    40
    While this film fits squarely into Soderbergh's recurrent goal of ignoring audience interest when possible, that's the only area in which it can be considered a success.
  37. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    40
    It's overextended and exhaustingly comic.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.9 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 100 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 38
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 38
  3. Negative: 15 out of 38
  1. roberts.
    0
    This movie was awful not one laugh in the whole movie the only good part of this was when it read the end.
  2. MikeD.
    5
    Slow developing movie, that never really developed. The movie couldn't decide if it was a comedy or a drama and in the end was neither.
  3. DT
    1
    Terrible-- no humor, a nothing.
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