Sunday, November 19, 2006

Politically Motivated Movie Review: Fast Food Nation

N.B. I will not be putting up a Politically Motivated Movie Review of The U.S. vs. John Lennon until it comes out on video because it only played here in town for one weekend...and that would be the weekend I was in New York. The Fates just were not with me that particular week.

Fast Food Nation
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Um, no. What the hell was this? It was overly-long, fairly incoherent, and left everyone with a sense of complete and utter hopelessness. Don't read any further if you don't want to know what happens.


***SPOILERS***

The movie follows the lives of several people involved in preparing and selling food for the fictional fast food joint "Mickey's Burgers." First, we have the illegal immigrants (the ones who survived their border crossing, that is) who work to butcher the meat. It's really exciting when one such immigrant is badly hurt and the corporate executives tell his non-English-speaking wife that some of his injuries may have been pre-existing and also he was allegedly on drugs, so they're not going to help with the hospital bills. It gets even better when said wife has to go to work at the meat factory to make some money and gets a job on the "kill floor." She and audience members alike are permanently scarred when they witness cows being slaughtered (this audience member probably will continue to eat beef, though, which sort of negates the purpose of this one truly shocking scene in the movie).

Then, we have the Mickey's Burgers corporate bigwig who's been told to investigate the meat plant because an independent study has found that the meat contains large quantities of fecal matter. It's really uplifting when said executive confirms that this is the case but decides not to do anything about it.

And lastly, we have the darling young girl who works the cash register at a local Mickey's Burgers. She's the only one who gets off her ass and does anything...she quits her job and then joins Avril Lavigne (no shit) and some other local college kids to try to set some cows free. But the cows are dumb and don't go through the fence, so they accomplish absolutely nothing.

And neither did this film. Half of it was spent preaching to the audience that they needed to get out and do something (especially if they're young), but this was negated by the fact that the film's one young person who did try to do something failed. What's the message in that?

Disappointing and depressing.

Comments on "Politically Motivated Movie Review: Fast Food Nation"

 

Blogger Elena said ... (7:51 PM, November 24, 2006) : 

I love most of Richard Linklater's work: "Slackers", "Suburbia", "Waking life", "A scanner darkly"... but if this film has the purpose of scorning junk burguer food, forget it, I like my MacMenu on Fridays, it will be like that "Supersize me": it's not funny to be reminded of how many calories you must ingest when you're feeling down.

 

Blogger Becky Heineke said ... (8:48 PM, December 12, 2006) : 

Simon, a much, much delayed HA HA!! God, I can't even come over here anymore or else I'm wracked with guilt. I need a serious plan to manage my many blogging duties. :(

 

Blogger olivia Buckingham said ... (9:23 AM, November 05, 2010) : 

The earht is only 6-8 thousands year old and we did not evolve from monkeys! When a monkey mates with another monkey you get a baby monkey! You dont ever se a human pop out! If we evolved from monkeys, why aren't WE evolving into some other creature? Why does it stop at humans? God created the Heavens, the Earth, and us. period. Its the only logical answer.

 

Blogger olivia Buckingham said ... (9:33 AM, November 05, 2010) : 

This comment has been removed by the author.

 

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Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are based solely on the opinions the author who is not affiliated with anyone. At all. Except herself. This blog is strictly for entertainment purposes. The author would never claim to be anything less than an open liberal, but she's not operating a news organization here. In fact, it's possible she's full of crap (possible, but not likely).

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