Quick review: You know it's not a good movie when Kim Basinger is the best thing in it.
Full review: The Informers is a film based on Bret Easton Ellis' 1994 collection of short stories of the same name. It's about youth, drugs, rock stardom, sex, tri-sexuality, useless domestic violence and apparently the 1980's.
SHUT UP! I KNOW!
Now BELIEVE ME, I know ALL of those things should make for riveting filmwork, but alas, the motion picture industry has steered you wrong again. We get it: Hollywood is awful, people with money do drugs and everyone wore Ray-Ban glasses in the 80's. NEXT!
Billy Bob Thornton is SHIT, Mickey Rourke is visually disgusting (what else is new?) but I guess that his character is as well, so I guess it's alright...I guess. Winona Ryder is a waste. Yawn. Austin Nichols is SO gay that it is apparent they had to have his entire dialogue voiced over by another 'straighter' voice actor. (Austin, call me. I love boys with lisps.) There were like six other no named/no clothed other people who were naked the entire time (look for a clear shot of Jon Foster's cock sock during the twelfth useless time he's naked) and I don't know who Brad Renfro is (I'm SO serious. I walked out of Ghost World and couldn't imagine going to The Jacket. FYI: Adrien Brody please stop making films...) but he was REALLY good in this film. (I will say this though, when I was Googling him to see who he was, all these SUPER cute and hot photos came up and he does NOT look like this, in this, his final film before his fatal overdose...cokebloat was in FULL effect, people.)
38 minutes into this movie, I still had NO idea what the fuck it was about or what the fuck I was watching. Finally an hour and nine minutes in, it is revealed what the title of the movie "means" and guess what? It has nothing to do with anything. WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED THAT?
Okay, what haven't I covered? Oh, Kim Basinger and the 1980's. Okay, Ms. Basinger was wonderful, beautiful, perfectly directed and was VERY enjoyable in a well-isn't-SHE-talented-every-time-she's-on-screen sorta way. Nice job, honey. Keep up the great work.
Now then, the last thing I am going to cover is this film and the 1980's. I don't when the 80's became a period piece, but I now know how anyone from the Renaissance Era would feel if they were alive to watch us destroy what worked perfectly then but we felt needed to be "corrected" to make sense to a modern viewing audience. Here are a list of things that drove me FUCKING CRAZY during this film about them trying to covey the 1980's.
-The hair. No one wore distressed Shirley Temple curls in the 80's. It was permed, it was teased, it was frosted (or it was all three) and there was a claw (if you're from the East Coast) or a wave (if you're from the west coast) where there should have been bangs AND any ponytail worn was on the top of the head and to the side with a scrunchie or banana clip keeping it in place. There were no ringlets. There were no center parts. There was no mono-colored hair.
-Every girl work pink or white frosted lipstick. There was no such thing as a nude lip.
-Jelly bracelets were only worn with OTHER Jelly bracelets. Not with bangles. Bangles were only worn with Bangles. They were not mixed. It was an era of Accessory Segregation and we loved it.
-A bolo tie on one character, pegged pants on another and a buttoned up polka dot shirt on yet another: IS NOT CORRECT COSTUMING!!! One character should have been wearing all three with stonewashed jeans.
-The only DeLorean in the 1980's was in Back To The Future.
-and last but not least: Black denim was part of the 1990's, assholes! HOW DARE YOU BLAME THAT ON THE 1980'S!
****Okay, as I start doing even MORE research on this film, because I started to get REALLY pissed off about it again after that Black Denim incident), it turns out an ENTIRE plot line was cut out of the film that is in the book and the film makers failed to cut out all the 'fringe information' scenes, so as I'm reading summaries of each short story from the book, the film makes A LOT MORE SENSE.
Not complete sense, but a lot more. (For example: "Oh, Peter wasn't a pedophile, it was for the vampires. It's all SO clear now.")
