Review of Fast Food Nation (2006) by Markbayer — 13 Dec 2006

Richard Linklater's misshapen interpretation of Eric Schlosser's rigorously researched best seller that blows the whistle on Ronald McDonald and his ilk may not be the worst movie of the year per se (Poseidon, The Black Dahlia, Lady in the Water, The Sentinel and You, Me and Dupree just put up too tough a race), but if there were a special designation for 2006's most ineffective film, this would win it in a walk.

The wildly prolific and uneven Linklater, who in the last four years brought us the lovely, sublime Before Sunset, the visually striking A Scanner Darkly, the solidly entertaining School of Rock and the totally unnecessary Bad News Bears remake, makes (with not only Schlosser's blessing but also his co-participation) a fatal mistake that dooms it from square one: instead of molding Schlosser's material into the powerful documentary it should've been, Linklater turns it into a ponderous, lumpy, frequently inept and painfully dull work of fiction! It's a tragic shame, because Schlosser's work eviscerates not only the fast food industry but the culture that allows and encourages it to thrive in so many different ways that it cries out for a Michael Moore, Robert Greenwald or Errol Morris to do it justice.

In doing so it would almost surely have been a far more effective indictment than Morgan Spurlock's overrated Super Size Me, which suffered from too many specious or dishonest arguments (let's face it, you can get a hair in your burger at any restaurant in town, not just McDonald's) but an idiotic premise and "hook" (anybody who's stupid enough to eat nothing but Golden Arches food for a month when there are affordable alternatives is of course not only guaranteed to get sick but almost deserves to!) To Schlosser's credit (and admittedly Linklater's) he asks us to look at our dining choices altruistically rather than merely out of a selfish concern for our health; while he has much to say about the impure elements that make it into Quarter Pounders in the factory (and that also occasionally make it ONTO them in the restaurant as well, depending on just how disgruntled your local servers happen to be) he also arouses our compassion and concern for the inhumane treatment both of the cattle that are used and of the immigrant labor who are more or less treated LIKE cattle.

Linklater makes the miscalculation of, rather than SHOWING us much of this, having various guest actors mostly look at the camera and TELL us about it; he saves the gut-wrenching visuals until nearly the end, but given just how surprisingly wooden and amateurish most of his capable cast is here (except Maria Full of Grace's Catalina Sandino Moreno, who has some heartwrenching wordless moments) it's doubtful that much of the audience will be awake at that point to watch.

(For all its faults, Super Size Me certainly wasn't boring!) Schlosser's book is this generation's parallel to Upton Sinclair's 1906 expose of meat-packing practices in urban Chicago, The Jungle; Sinclair always regretted that, for all the changes his book and its uproar forced upon the industry, that the public didn't see the bigger picture Sinclair intended and embrace socialism (or at least reform the more heartless aspects of capitalism).

Any movie in which a group of high school kids (including a fast food employee) engage in an endless scene of agitprop chatter unpleasantly reminiscent of the worst campus-protest movie of 1971 before deciding to stick it to The Man by freeing a herd of cattle, and the main audience response elicited isn't solidarity or even sympathy with their cause but rather irritation at their naivete in wondering why Bessie and Elsie stay right where they are and DON'T make a break for it isn't going to come anywhere near achieving either Sinclair's or Schlosser's greater or lesser aims.

In fact, it's emblematic of Fast Food Nation's total failure in communicating its arguments that less than 48 hours after seeing it, I bought and ate a Big Mac and fries...