Fast Food Nation Review

"Fast Food Nation" reviews

Movie

Fast Food Nation

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-04-20 23:29:58

Rating

3/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Chow down on this taste of life inside the meat packing and "Happy Meal" Fast Food Nation.

Story

Based on the best-selling book of the same name, Fast Food Nation has three intertwined stories revolving around the fast food industry. Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is a corporate marketing guy assigned to put a positive spin on the bad news that fecal traces has been found in the meat. He goes to the meat factory to investigate and doesn't like what he sees, but no one offers him a viable solution. Then there's Raul (Wilmer Valderrama) and Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno), Mexican immigrants who cross the border illegally. The only job they can get is in the meat factory. She bears with demeaning sexual advances while he faces the unhealthy and dangerous conditions to try for the American Dream. Finally, we meet Amber (Ashley Johnson), who works in a local franchise. She's just a high school girl trying to pay for her car insurance. This isn't her future but it dominates her present. The corporate story is a comedy about ineffective management and media spin. The immigrants' story is a hard drama about a bad life. Amber's story straddles both lines--a slacker teen comedy but also introspective about what the job is doing to her soul. It may be no secret these days but it's still fascinating.

Acting

There is plenty of juicy dialogue for actors to sink their teeth into (pun intended). Kinnear plays the corporate suit as lovably as possible. He's the put-upon business cog similar to his characters in The Matador and Little Miss Sunshine, but funnier because it's the system that's futile, not his own dreams. Valderrama has a smaller part, just supporting his wife, going through a horrible life with noble determination. Moreno is as heartbreaking as she was in her Oscar-nominated performance in Maria Full of Grace. You sense so much potential in her ,and she's stuck in the factory, demeaned by sexual harassment and unable to save her sister from succumbing to it. She adds new colors of despair to the immigrant experience. Johnson is careful not to make her character too wise beyond her years. She really is just a normal kid. High school sucks, so do counter jobs. It's not about being unique, just relatable. Cameos stand out, too. Ethan Hawke plays the coolest uncle ever. He comes to town for two scenes, spouts off his cool-uncle advice and then leaves. Even though he's a self-confessed loser, he's convincing. And he buys her beer. Bruce Willis gives a speech on the meat industry with his David Addison smirk, while chomping into a burger. We're sold.

Direction

Director Richard Linklater does a good job keeping the comedy and drama balanced. He cuts back and forth between stories at sensible intervals. Towards the end, Greg Kinnear disappears for a long time, but Ashley Johnson's story beefs up to compensate. Showing the inner workings of the meat factory is pretty powerful. Cow guts falling out and bodies mangled by machinery are not fun things to watch, but they are important to remember. It's all up there on the screen but not gratuitous—and doesn't have to ruin meat forever. Just think how all foods have processes that we don't see and still taste good. There are plenty of scenes in which the characters are talking, a real Linklater specialty (Before Sunset, Before Sunrise, for example). Whether they're talking about meat or minimum wage jobs or life ambitions, the conversations have a catchy flow. The satire of corporate America and slacker lifestyles juxtaposed against the drama of immigrant life, makes Fast Food Nation both ridiculously funny and appropriately uncomfortable.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.

Movie

Fast Food Nation

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-05-03 00:00:00

Provider

MyMovies

Review

Directed by Richard Linklater and based on Eric Schlosser's non-fiction best-seller, "Fast Food Nation" is an engaging, provocative multi-character drama that takes some well-aimed and timely potshots at the fast food industry. Set in the midwestern town of Cody, Colorado, the film presents several characters with connections to the junk-food industry, including: Greg Kinnear, as a fast food marketing rep sent to investigate reports of faecal matter in the meat; Catalina Sandino Moreno, as a Mexican immigrant who gets a job at Cody's meat-packing plant; and newcomer Ashley Johnson, as Amber, a fast food cashier who gets her eyes opened by some student activists (Lou Pucci and Avril Lavigne).

Schlosser adapted the screenplay himself and the multi-character structure allows the film to address all the important parts of the book without feeling too preachy or heavy-handed. Some of it is played for laughs (e.g. Bruce Willis's uncredited cameo as a bullish meat-buyer), but much of it is genuinely horrifying, such as the reality of the slaughterhouse 'killing floor' or the revelations about the contamination of the meat.

The ensemble cast give terrific performances, with Ashley Johnson in particular emerging as a talent to watch. There are also some enjoyable cameos from the likes of Ethan Hawke (as Amber's laid-back uncle), an unexpectedly busty Patricia Arquette (as Amber's mother) and the afore-mentioned Bruce Willis.

The combination of likeable characters, a thought-provoking script and the film's semi-documentary approach works brilliantly, forcing us to question our own role in the fast food chain. It'll certainly make you think twice about that post-film burger. Highly recommended.

Movie

Fast Food Nation

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-03-12 16:00:30

Provider

Review

Quality documentaries have been pouring out of the US in recent years and it seems probable that the film of Eric Schlosser's best selling expose of the American burger industry would've joined them had it not been for Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me.

So Richard Linklater (Slacker, After Sunset) has re-imagined it as a work of fiction, treating it in much the same way as Traffic did the drug industry (one which some campaigners would probably see in much the same light), with myriad aspects of the story being told entirely separately.

Greg Kinnear is the executive at (ahem) Mickey's trying to find out why there is, quite literally, crap in their prize burger, The Big One (can you see who they're getting at here?). For the first hour or so Kinnear is our guide, grilling Bruce Willis' complacent deal-broker, after which he disappears from our screens, only to re-appear in the denouement with pride (if no more Big Ones) now swallowed.

Linklater writes in several Mexican illegal immigrants - all of them fodder for the factory line - as well as Amber (Ashley Johnson), an idealistic high school student working the till at one branch until she quits under pressure from her disapproving uncle (Ethan Hawke).

Fast Food Nation forever borders on the preachy and Amber's introduction to the real world - where she and fellow campaigning students 'free' a herd of cows only to find they won't escape the pound - is one of many forced moments. Still, by telling a multi-stranded story without ever losing sight of the big picture, Fast Food Nation succeeds in its main objective - it'll take courage and an iron stomach to walk into your local 'Mickeys' after watching this.

Movie

Fast Food Nation

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-04-26 15:00:09

Provider

Review

Richard Linklater's talents are seemingly endless. Having proved that he can direct touchy-feely films (Before Sunrise), and turn his hand to animated features (Waking Life), Linklater has transformed Eric Schlosser's expose of the fast food industry into a feature film starring Greg Kinnear, rather than adapting it as a documentary.

Kinnear is Don Anderson, a marketing man at a company – Mickey's – that bears an uncanny resemblance to McDonald's, strangely. Anderson learns that the company's latest burger, The Big One, contains among its numerous components manure, obliging him to visit a slaughterhouse in Colorado. There. he encounters the Mexican meat packers who enlighten him as to exactly what is going into your average Mickey's burger. "We all have to eat a little shit from time to time," says Bruce Willis in a cameo as a cynical Mickey's bigwig.

Distressed, Anderson checks out of his hotel the next morning and, improbably, checks out of the film itself. As such the film's most touching moments are provided not by Anderson but by Catalina Sandino Moreno (of Maria Full Of Grace fame), an 'illegal alien' from Mexico, who has to take a job in the slaughterhouse after her husband is injured at the plant. But, like Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, who play brother and sister, she disappears from the film as soon as she's grabbed our interest, ensuing that, as noble as Fast Food Nation's aims are, it might have worked better as a documentary.