SUPER SIZE ME
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: A-
Roadside Attractions/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Directed by: Morgan Spurlock
Cast: Morgan Spurlock, Ronald McDonald, Dr. Daryl Isaacs,
Dr. Lisa Ganjhu, Dr. Stephen Siegel, Bridget Bennett, Eric
Rowley, Alexandra Jamieson, Dr. David Satcher, John Banzhaf,
III, John Robbins, Dr. Kelly Brownell, Marion Nestle, Lisa Young,
Don Gorske, Dr. William Klish, Sec. Tommy Thompson, Bruce
Howlett
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 4/28/04
Sixty percent of adult Americans are overweight, making our
country the fattest on the globe. While some Americans were
always overweight, the problem has ballooned during the past
twenty years, which makes one wonder: If we were just as
inactive in 1984 as we are today and if junk food was around for
the past score of years as well, what's different about
contemporary times? Is the unfortunate change related to the
custom of super-sizing orders? After all, McDonald's is
patronized daily by one out of every four Americans. "Super
Size Me"'s impresario recently went on a quest to discover the
reasons for our epidemic of plenty. If you guest that a
combination of too many calories and too little exercise has
something to do with the problem, you're on target. What's
riveting here, though, is not the predictable answers but the
entertaining way that the film-maker lets us into the loop.
If this writer-director-chief actor of "Super Size Me," Morgan
Spurlock, reminds you of Michael Moore, you're probably in
good company. Spurlock's debut film, shot with hand-held
cameras in twenty cities from California to the New York island,
is brimming over with spontaneous performances, clever and
fast-moving animation, and a star who is funny, passionate
about his cause, and eager to give us the spoonful of sugar that
makes the medicine go down. (Oops, scratch the sugar. That's
virtually a no-no in the minds of several participants in this
hugely entertaining nonfiction piece.) You don't wonder that no
major executive from McDonald's was willing to grant Spurlock
an interview, much less return his phone calls, as he hammers
away at America's favorite fast-food joint by using himself as a
6-foot 2 laboratory rat.
By going to an extreme an intemperate move possibly
indulged in by a sizeable minority of Mickey D's cheerleading
fressers Spurlock aims to show just how bad a diet of burgers,
fries, and shakes can be, particularly when consumed in super-
sized portions such as the company's 42-ounce Coke and extra
large packet of fries. The film-maker agrees to eat three meals
a day at McDonald's, to sample everything on the menu for a
30-day period, and to order super-sized portions each the
dishes are suggested.
Limiting the deadening documentary template talking-heads
format that makes sure mainstream audiences will flock instead
to action-adventure thrillers, Spurlock conducts spontaneous
mini-interviews with folks on the street of all ages, saving the
three-minute sessions for exchanging ideas with doctors,
nurses, nutritionists, school officials and a physiologist. At least
one doc suggests that he throw in the towel by the eighteenth
day, as by this time Spurlock had been nauseated (we see
close-up the product of his spurned food on the street), been
afflicted with eye-ball busting migraines, and gained no small
number of pounds ultimately logging in a final weight of
seventeen pounds more than he started with 30 days earlier.
His cholesterol skyrocketed from a healthy 160 to over 240, his
blood pressure zoomed, and his liver moaned in toxic pain.
Ironically, his girlfriend is a vegan chef, one who states that she
would not mind sitting occasionally with her man at a Mickey D's
as long as she did not have to partake of the "nourishment."
Spurlock never convinces us that fast-food junk food being a
better name since, after all, carrots can be juiced in seconds
and cheese-reduced pizza with broccoli can be served just as
fast as burgers is THE cause of weight problems including
obesity. However even if we discount all the put-downs of
McDonald's whose fare, to be fair, Spurlock finds
delicious there's little question that the more we learn about
food via an unending avalanche of self-help books and
magazines, the more we are pushed to gobble anti-oxidants, cut
carbs, go macrobiotic, try starvation diets the more we're
getting bigger and bigger and bigger each year. Just what is
going on? Surely there are people who live nowhere near a
McDonald's, a KFC, a Wendy's, a Popeye who are fat as
houses!
Notwithstanding the unscientific methodology of Spurlock's
quest, and regardless of how we may dismiss his findings as
unsupported by hard evidence, we'll probably agree on one
thing. Michael Moore, move over. This guy know how to make
a documentary that's rapidly paced, loaded with spontaneity,
funny, caustic, and, well, Moore-ish is how we can best describe
the project though one wishes only that he could have used
real film to avoid the cinema-verite blurs that cross the screen
throughout the film's 98 exciting minutes.
Not Rated. 98 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
Harveycritic@cs.com
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