 | | Super Size Me |
Director - Morgan Spurlock
Let it be said, I'm all about the corporation bashing. I go to the protests, I've read Naomi Klein, I've got a subscription to Adbusters, and Fast-Food Nation is on my coffee table. In terms of mainstream revolutionary, I'm there. So, when I heard that some guy named Morgan had eaten McDonalds for a month and filmed it, I thought, Fucking rights, here we go, this movie will kick ass from here to there. I followed its snowball popularity from the time it entered Sundance up until today, where I finally got to see the movie. First off, let it be said that when I was 15, I once ate McDonalds for lunch every day for 25 days and unlike Morgan, I chose to Supersize it (plus, sometimes I got an extra cheeseburger). I have since completely abandoned all fast-food outlets, but enough of me and onto the movie.
My initial reaction is that I expected a little more from the film. I had heard so much about it and read article after article claiming its brilliance that when I saw and heard things that were basic common knowledge to anyone who pays attention to their diet, I felt a little let down. It could be that because I've already read all the facts he was talking about or perhaps because I followed the McLibel trial from the start, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm some cutting edge revolutionary with a Lenin tattoo because I'm not. It's just that most of the information he provides is common knowledge for many and readily available for anyone else. For people completely in the dark about their diets, there is some scary information here. Spurlock's body goes from perfect to something resembling breathing lard; his moods shifts 'on a dime' as he says; his sex life fades (his girlfriend notes that she always has to be on top cause he gets tired).
It could be Spurlock himself that hinders the movie's genius. He's not very funny by himself and he doesn't exactly grip the audience's attention. There are of course a few memorable characters, mainly Don Gorszky who eats on average 2 Big Macs a day. During the movie, Gorszky celebrates his 19000th Big Mac. Not only is his diet odd, but who the hell counts the number of Big Macs they eat? Don Gorszky does, I know that much. Spurlock's dietician will also surely be a noted character, seeing as she was amazingly beautiful and friendlier with Spurlock than most dieticians should be. His doctors are great as well; oddly though, the doctor that tells him he's going to die if he keeps it up is actually over weight himself. Also, many of the people who work for this or that Health Organization are over weight themselves. Its odd to sit and watch someone talk about the obesity problems in the US and yet they're carrying a few chins of their own.
One of the problems I think is that a lot of the people who see the movie already know this and are already maintaining a healthy diet. For the most part, you're not going to see families at this movie or many over-weight people. If people who eat McDonalds choose to go to the movies, they're surely not going to go see a movie that criticizes their eating habits. Over weight people have enough to worry about; paying 10 bucks to have someone sit there and tell them they're fat (something they surely already know) is probably not their idea of money well spent. Instead, they will sit through 3 hours of Troy and stuff their faces with popcorn, while in the next theater over, a waifish vegan sits and nods at Spurlock's Cholesterol Suicide.
All in all, it's a good movie and for some, it's an eye-opener. For the simple reason that everything I heard is available in a few books and because Spurlock didn't grip my attention, I felt like I received the child's sized portion when I expected the super-sized version.
- Darren Susin | 2004-06-04
