Fast Food Nation

I got to see Fast Food Nation last night at it's premiere.  The NYTimes was sitting a few rows back (no joke).   I was sorta excited to see this movie even though I haven't read the book or knew much about it other than seeing a teaser trailer.   I am going to save you ten bucks or 11 if you live in a city that is charging 11.   If you don't to ruin the film for yourself then stop reading but we warned that I am really trying to save you cash.

First, it is nothing like the book or so I was told from my friend who came with me who had read it.  The book is filled with facts and info and tidbits too hard to make into a movie (unless its done by Michael Moore) so the director and the creators of the movie had to bring in a plot and well, a story.  The movie starts off sorta promising but then gets lost and meanders all over the place, sorta like TV show Lost at this point actually, and tried to take on way too many hot topics.  There is "shit in the meat" is where they should have started and stopped.  Trying to take on stupid college kids trying to save cows, midwestern families without dreams or goals, Mexicans crossing the border and the United States' immigration issues, low blow shots at corporate America and drugs (yes, drugs) is just wayyyy tooooo much for a Hollywood movie to fully pull off successfully.   The movie had some great issues even if they tried to tackle more than one of them but it just falls flat and annoying on everyone.  When an illegal immigrant leans over a giant meat-grinder, you think, "There go his legs!" it would be more surprising if there, indeed, did not go his legs.  When another Mexican girl utters, "not all of us can get hired at Banana Republic," do you really sit there thinking that you actually care?  Sadly no.  Or how about one of the most disgusting moments of film I have ever seen.  From the moment the stun gun hits the cow on the head, to the first and last time they cut into the cow, to the intestines sliding around on a conveyor belt; they show it all.   But why?  It is at this point that the movie loses all it had working for it, which sadly isn't much.  The advertisements showing that Fast Food Nation is a Cannes official selection shouldn't tempt you. 

There are many ways to go about getting you to stop eating McDonalds or any other fast chain restaurant hamburger and many other ways to get you to boycott corporate America but not one is justified as smart in Fast Food Nation.  Not one!  Showing a butchering of a cow is just wrong.  You don't need to see the actual butchering, the average American knows full well how they kill a cow to make the hamburger they inhale.  And once you see the bloody cows dismembered head with its eye still moving in a trash can looking at you, you just feel that the film is trying to give you cheap shots to make you feel disgusted and angry at the whole industry... but in reality you instead feel nauseas from the cheap ploy to get you to stop eating the hamburger rather than the hamburger process itself.  Making you feel nauseas is very different than making you believe you shouldn't eat at a fast food restaurant.   Showing fat Americans in the Mall of America would have been much more successful in getting you to stop eating at McDonalds or Walmart.   Having me film the airport in Dallas after returning from Buenos Aires in which I was horrified by what the average American looks like would have been enough to get people to stop their disgusting eating habits.  But aiming the propoganda at so much does so little.  Burger King doesn't make you do drugs.  Not eating hamburgers isn't going to save a Mexican immigrants life.  And boycotting a Wendy's because they have unfair labor laws isn't going to do jack in the long run.

And if you still don't believe me on how I disliked the movie because it just didn't work, Halim (my friend who I went with) and I trekked to Soho to get a bacon cheeseburger at a greasy pub that has one of the best burgers in town.  Fyi, it is directly across from Mercer Kitchen and it was delicous !!

Comments

[patrick]

just saw Fast Food Nation, it's an impactful flick to say the least... earlier today i passed up a sausage mcmuffin because of it. Evidently it is worth passing up fast food for more than the obvious health reasons.

[Chad]

Sorry to hear the movie was a disappointment. I read the book and loved it. The whole animal rights movement is so complex. Some of animals do get abused, and you feel sorry for them. Nobody wants to eat an abused animal. But on the other hand you have animals like chickens, who everybody knows live in small cages, yet they are also very lucky – just think about all that annul stimulation they get every time they lay an egg...mmmm. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.