Directed by: Morgan Spurlock
A lawsuit was filed a couple of years back in which several fat people sued McDonald's because they said the food, and only the food, contributed to their obesity and poor health. McDonald's approach to the lawsuit was indeed the correct one. They admitted that eating their food constantly may not be good for you, but everyone knows that. Which is true: everyone knows that. No one eats at McDonald's expecting great nutrition. McDonald's is what it is; fast, cheap food that tastes great, but it is way fattening. If you cut out every food that is "bad for you", you'll be reduced to eating salads for the rest of your life. And I have news for those who want to try that: Even if you never touch McDonald's again, you'll still die someday. Sad, but also true.
Documentarian Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me is a look at the fast food industry and Spurlock himself experiments on what a fast-food diet can do to you. He eats McDonald's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 30 days, with no exercise except for walking (and a limited amount at that).
The film itself is rather boring. Seeing Spurlock order meal after meal at McDonald's and then going to doctors to confirm that his health is getting worse is repetitious and proceeds to beat you over the head with its message. Watching Super Size Me is like having someone berate you for a mistake long after you've apologized for it.
Yet, Spurlock, who looks way too much like Metallica's James Hetfield, glosses over the idea of personal responsibility while taking dead aim at the fast food companies. The way the movie is skewed, you can exercise as much personal responsibility as you want, but evil McDonald's lures you back like a Svengali. One doctor suggests that eating McDonald's is on par with heroin use.
If one was to argue that McDonald's thrives because parents sometimes are tired and lazy and want to quickly feed themselves and their children at low cost, then I would agree. I'm guilty as charged in that regard. And who among us isn't? Super Size Me touches on that briefly, but it is dead set on proving that McDonald's is more to blame.
I'm quite tired of documentaries "exposing" that large corporations are interested in making money at the expense of their customers. In this film, Spurlock hires four doctors to monitor his health and travels all over the U.S. buying McDonald's and interviewing subjects. How do you think he afforded that to make his crummy film? Right, a film company, one of those "corporations". So, it's OK for him to be in bed with a corporation to make a film, which is supposed to make money, but not OK for McDonald's to make money?
Maybe if we all just accepted that corporations are here to stay then we'll all be happier. Is it right that corporations pretty much run everything? No. But that's the way things are and we should all move on with our lives. By the way, Super Size Me also shows Spurlock vomiting on the ground and gives us a shot of the vomit. His girlfriend also talks about how their sex life has gotten real bad since he started the McDonald's diet. Corporate dollars at work.
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