The Weirdness!

The Film: The Informant!
The Participants: Matt Damon and a whole lot of 'B list' actors-including the Smothers Brothers! -who act their butts off, often unrecognisably, but always to excellent effect.
The Dealio: OK, spots fans, (puttin' on my Bahstin accent, however awkwardly), think we all suspected Matt Damon ('Matt Daymin! Matt Daymin!') had a pretty good sense of humor about himself and his career. Fer sher, we knew that he was capable of chameleon-like submersion into his roles...to a point of near seamless personality assumption.
Now, here comes yet another opportunity for Damon to show his ability to change it up. In The Informant!, he effortlessly assumed a role ('based on a true story') that is a near sibling of Stephen in Shattered Glass. An idiot savant who takes on much more than he bargained for, in an effort to cover his own gadumphka, but without accepting any possibility that he might, just possibly, be... what's the phrase I am looking for? Oh, right: guilty as hell.
In nearly 30 lbs of extra avoirdupois and a ridiculous toup, Damon swaggers, self-talks and schmoozes his way through meetings with the Eff-Bee-freakin'-Eye, his superiors (in every way) at ADM, his wife and assorted overseas dignitaries. What? You have a problem with that? OK, how about, instead of coming clean... another of his implausible tales? On and on it goes, and with every game of mental chicken, our 'hero' flies just a taddy bit closer to the sun. Yet no one ever calls him on his line of bull-pucky. And, here we, the audience, sit, absorbing every fabrication, and, somehow, still believing in the man, hoping something, somehow, will break free and allow him to triumph in the end.
The Grading Session: Gotta be 3.98 stars out of 5. Sorry Steven Soderberg, but you needed a better editor. I know you've heard me say this before, but an ace editor can literally transform an OK flick into an Academy Award nom. This film, while engratiating, just outstayed it's welcome by about 15 minutes. I'm just sayin'.
Lessons Learned: Only the strong- and the really sneaky, unencumbered by any sense of honesty or basic social value- can survive a Federal probe. Also- Damon can successfully pull off pretty much any role, from that of a penner of fairy tales, to a drug-addicted soldier to a math wiz to a master thief. Also: who, exactly, says crime doesn't pay...at least for the un-faint-hearted?