Review of The Founder (2016) by Michael M — 17 Aug 2017

The Founder follows to formula of movies like The Social Network and Steve Jobs of following entrepreneurs who we've been told to idolize and showing that most of them were actually kind of assholes.

And you know what? It still works. Actually this is probably one of the better ones. It's surprisingly very engaging with a worthwhile story and pretty solid directing and acting. There was a scene early on with the McDonald brothers explaining how they came up with the system that would eventually be the standard for all fast food chains, and I was surprised how totally invested I was in hearing their story.

As a look at the creation of the fast food chain market it's very interesting. As a character study, it's also interesting. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch as the innovative but soft-spoken McDonald brothers both do a good job, but Michael Keaton totally steals the show.

The movie takes an interesting tactic by getting us to empathize with him very early on before slowly revealing he's really not a very good person after all and he's going to make some pretty sleazy business decisions.

It doesn't give you a very happy ending, but as a story of the creation of a corporate giant and the squashing of the little guy it's actually quite fascinating.