The Informers: Critic Reviews

It's by far the most slack, ho-hum movie ever made from Ellis' material.

The performances run the gamut from twitchy to catatonic, and the stoned stiffness of the actors seems to have less to do with the affectlessness of the characters than with their own confusion.

There is a weird, almost comic absence of insight and perspective here. But it is a joke without humour and without a punchline.

The dialogue is laughable. Lines are spoken so languidly that the actors seem bored. Shattering revelations are delivered in the same monotone as casual patter.

A nihilistic, narcissistic, knuckleheaded move about nihilistic, narcissistic knuckleheads, The Informers might have been an interesting exercise in satire, if it only had a sense of humor. Which it doesn't.

The piece had better have something fresh to say. The Informers doesn't, nor does it seem to want to.

There's plenty of incident, but not much plot. As befits a tale of absolute self-absorption and unconscious revelation, The Informers often seems to be telling on itself.

Gregor Jordan's pointless adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis book is successful only in the sense that it accurately mimics the emptiness of its subject.

Ellis's big notions are less insightful than they pretend to be.

If The Informers doesn't sound to you like a pleasant time at the movies, you are right.

This one's a certifiable soul-sucker, dining out on its characters' venalities while wagging a finger at the horror, the horror.

Repulsive 80s flashback.

TMZ with phony gravitas. Ellis' stories had more oomph before drug-crazed screwups like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse became the center of the Internet news cycle.

The Informers is such a wretched piece of garbage that there's a certain amount of guilt attached to even writing about it.

A rancid load of swill called The Informers, from a depraved 1994 book by Bret Easton Ellis, is, like The Soloist, a look at the underbelly of L.A., but the resemblance ends there.

Rating less than zero on the sophistication scale, The Informers is thus a totally faithful adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel--and an accurate look at early '80s-era Los Angeles.

The Informers is a movie so seamy it makes you want to take a bath afterward. Rarely has so much sin seemed so boring.

Occasionally, some fool gets the idea that his literary wretched excess would make for a good film.

People sometimes had ordinary, reasonably polite conversations, even in the '80s. Not absolutely all the talking was affectless mumbling, angry recriminations, drug deals or TV news about Ronald Reagan.

The Informers is the kind of movie that, upon leaving the theater, provokes the urge to take a shower.

Do some blow. Curse humanity. Convert to nilhilism. Reread American Psycho. But don't for the love of God and cinema see The Informers.

It's a movie with Altmanesque pretensions, but under Gregor Jordan's flat-line direction amounts to flipping through an out-of-date fashion magazine, one that barely spurs the energy to point and laugh.

Imagine American Psycho with less violence but more nudity, transplanted from New York to California and stripped of all self-awareness. That's The Informers.

...a ninety-eight-minute snooze-fest.