Fast Food Nation Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)October 18th, 2006
FAST FOOD NATION
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
FAST FOOD NATION, directed by Richard Linklater (WAKING LIFE), is a very slackly paced piece of satire that works only very sporadically. Attempting to skewer the world of fast food by taking aim at a McDonald's look-alike called Mickey's, the DOA film plays like LONE STAR on valium.
In one of several parallel stories, we follow a group of "exploited" illegal aliens who cross the border, trading in their $3 per day jobs in Mexico for ones that pay $10 an hour at a U.S. meat packing plant.
The movie wears its liberal politics on its sleeve. The slow and didactic film instructs us obsessively that fast food restaurants are evil, meat packers are more evil still and machines are actually the root of all evil. Also bad are people who put up houses, since they despoil the land of the only good people in the story, which are the ranchers.
The inference to draw from the movie's twisted logic would be that ranchers should raise cattle for others to admire but not to slaughter for food. These admirers, one supposes, shouldn't live in houses, since they are bad, as they use up valuable ranch lands where we should raise cows to be displayed. Of course, the movie doesn't actually examine the net effect of its logic, which would be okay if it were funnier or more believably acted.
>From his excellent cast (Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis, Kris Kristofferson, etc.) Linklater manages to get nothing but subpar performances. The script by Linklater and Eric Schlosser, based on Schlosser's book, is an unattactive mess. Filled with completely superfluous characters, subplots and scenes, the story never comes close to gelling or ever being credible.
One of the main storylines has Kinnear playing a Mickey's executive named Don Henderson who has been assigned to inspect their chief meatpacking plant. It seems that fecal matter has been showing up in "The Big One," the famous and best-selling burger that Henderson's team designed, using just the right combination of artificial flavorings. Of course, Henderson will prove more than willing to sell his soul to keep his job, even if it means the American food supply continues to be contaminated. Contrast this to the reaction in the real world, where the fresh spinach growers recently did everything imaginable to discover the source of a problem with their product.
I don't mind being lectured constantly if the film is funny, which FAST FOOD NATION rarely is.
FAST FOOD NATION runs a painfully slow 1:46. The film is in English and in Spanish with English subtitles. It is rated R for "disturbing images, strong sexuality, language and drug content" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 20, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
