Director: Morgan Spurlock
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 2.0
There's a really good documentary lost inside this 'expose' by Spurlock - one that wants to investigate the horrible lunch program in schools around the United States (something I can attest to; the smell is positively revolting), the lack of time in our hectic lifestyles to be inconvenienced with eating correctly and other factors that contribute to why we're the fattest nation in the world - that's diluted by his own camera-hogging and constant whining (he overdoes the acting, listing complaint after complaint and showing himself vomiting). While your own ideas on the subject may influence how you interpret this, I felt like Spurlock places too much blame on the fast food chains themselves, giving lip service to the need for personal responsibility; it is also inferior to Eric Schlosser's somewhat overrated but still worthwhile Fast Food Nation, which goes a lot farther into the development of the fast food phenomenon than Spurlock (though I should mention it's more than a little unfair to compare the movie to a book, considering the time and space Schlosser has versus Spurlock's consumer friendly 90 minutes or so). As a provocation, it's less thorough than Michael Moore, but it does have more than enough jaw-dropping moments to make it a good starter in the realm of recovery from Junk Food Addiction: acknowledge the problem, then deal with it.
