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Chad
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Posted: October 1, 2004 at 12:00am
Morgan Spurlock, director and star of this documentary, sets out to show the dangers of McDonalds fast-food, and the evils of their marketing tactics. After a lawsuit by two grossly obese teenage girls was dropped due to McDonalds lawyers saying it was impossible to prove that there is any risk involved with eating their product on a long-term basis, Morgan decides to test that statement by eating nothing but McDonalds food, three times a day, every day, for a solid month. No sort of pain medication or vitamins will be taken during this time period, no non-McDonalds beverages will be drank, and he will super-size any meal if the person taking his order offers it. Before starting his month, he goes to three different doctors to get a checkup to show that he's fit and healthy before the constant McDonalds eating; each one shows that he is perfectly fit. He weighs 185 pounds, great cholesterol, no risk of diabetes, basically in tip-top shape. However, his health plummets and his weight soars throughout the experiment, causing all of his doctors to urge him to quit immediately. In between shots of him eating and going over the ailments facing him, he shows some facts and does some interviews with various people throughout the city, covering the fast-food and soda industries ties in the school lunchroom and the marketing towards children.
Great documentary right here, much better than I'd thought it would be. The way this documentary plays out is strikingly similar to that of little-known director Michael Moore, in the sense that he meshes shocking facts with humorous pieces so seamlessly. Had Morgan been an obese, unshaven fellow in a baseball cap, one might even mistake this for Moore's work due to the similarities; there's the cartoon pieces used to further illustrate the points, catchy tunes that directly deal with the subject at hand, and the same sort of person-in-power wording errors that Moore loves to use so much (here, we find a representative for a large number of fast-food and snack products admitting that they are part of the problem, which, according to the credits, cost him his job). That's not to say that Morgan completely ripped off his style from Moore, because Morgan clearly has a style of his own that he brings to the film; however, the similarities are definitely there for fans of Michael Moore.
Surprisingly enough, this documentary is one of the very few that handles any questions and statements that I had prior to watching it. A fair number that I've seen would avoid, ignore or forget about parts that I personally would have liked to see covered, but that's not the case here. The topics of "people know fast-food is bad" and obese people suing McDonalds over their own eating problems are both covered nicely, with the blame never really being put solely on the restaurant or the people. The basic message that the director tried to convey was that while the food will cause you problems and put extra pounds on your body, you do have a choice on where you decide to eat dinner at and that the blame can not be placed solely on McDonalds or any other fast-food business. Instead of just leaving it at that, Morgan throws out all sorts of facts and figures to show that there's much more risk involved than just gaining a few pounds, and does so in such a way to not come off sounding like a health-club advertisement.
If you're a fan of Michael Moore's style of handling "people-in-charge screwing the little guy" situations, you'd most likely enjoy this film. While health and diet are nowhere near the top of my entertainment-value list, I thoroughly enjoyed this film, which grants it a 8/10.
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MrDerp
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Posted: September 20, 2005 at 5:06pm
Honestly, if someone is dumb enough to eat fast food every meal every day, you think this movie will have any effect on them? This film had as much of a point as making a movie about dogs barking. We know what happens, we don't need you to show us for 2 hours.
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BuryMeAlive
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Posted: February 5, 2006 at 8:18am
I could easy eat a fat burger right after the movie, I mean if you really do eat 3 times a day at McDonalds, well then you truly are a moron.
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Crispy
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Posted: April 12, 2010 at 3:19pm
This was actually extremely entertaining and much less preachy than I thought it was going to be. One of the biggest surprises is how realistically it handled it's material, as I was fully prepared for 100 minutes of McDonalds bashing.
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