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Super Size Me

Director: Morgan Spurlock
Producers: J.R. Morley, Heather M. Winters

Reviewed by Chris Ching

Usually around 10:00 am after I've goofed off for the first hour of work, I begin to have an incredible hankering for a couple of McDonalds breakfast buddies , a hashbrown, and a large glass of orange juice. Now since watching Super Size Me, I think I'd rather have a root canal than answer the call of the Golden Arches.

That's the sentiment McDonalds corporate are no doubt frightened of in lieu of the media response to Morgan Spurlock's new documentary Super Size Me, a humorously scathing indictment of the house Ronald built, the fast food industry, and the rampant obesity problem American is currently dealing with (or more to the point not).

The "toy" to this watchable happy meal is that director Spurlock ate McDonalds for every meal every day for a full, liver destroying month. This gimmick is both the movies' raison d'etre and achilles heel. It's a provocative hook for an exploration of the fast food industry, but its also no more profound than the Jackass stunts perpetrated on MTV. He's endangering his life, but it's gonna make him a star.

Super Size Me opens with Morgan prepping himself for his gastric Odyssey. His rules are simple: he can only eat food sold at McDonalds with each item tried at least once. All Micky D cashier "super size" queries are to be met with a resounding yes.

Morgan's first meal is harmless- you'll actually start developing your own McDonalds fix in the theater- but as the days roll by and every inch of the McDonalds menu is explored, a sickness sets in. The patties grow menacing, the fries sinister, the Chicken McNugget revealed as some unholy Frankenstein monster of various non harmonious chicken parts. Not surprisingly, Morgan's health deteriorates to dangerous levels.

Interspersed between his feedings, Morgan delves into the changes McDonalds has directly and indirectly wrought on American culture: the art of the franchise, food addiction, and the sad fact that more children recognize Ronald McDonald than Jesus Christ. Morgan displays an "aw shucks" likeability and steers the film in the right direction even if he does cop a lot of his shtick from Michael Moore. Like Moore, his approach at times can be...well... tasteless. A few closeups of huge cottage cheese like asses gets the point across we're a "fat" nation, thirty more similar shots later and these butts are no longer warnings but laugh chasing punchlines. Also soundtracking a gastric bypass surgery to the tune of Strauss' "Blue Danube" is just plain wrong.

Along the way , we get to meet an interesting cast of "characters". Morgan's aforementioned girlfriend Alex is aghast at his quest and Morgan's subsequent McDonalds induced bedroom failures. Jared Fogle of Subway fame makes an appearance in his role as motivational speaker. There's also "Big Mac Enthusiast" Don Gorske who numbers the amount of Big Macs he's consumed in the tens of thousands. My favorites though were two fast food loving teenagers whose favorite mantra is "Make it bacon!"

Super Size Me is a little calculated at times, but you'd be hard pressed to find a current film with this much wit and chutzpah. In a conformist summer movie season, it's a downright miracle.

Rating:

(3 out of 4 stars)

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