'Fast Food Nation' Leaves Odd Taste

DVD Review

By: Daniel Gross

Posted: 3/12/07

The film adaptation of the popular exposé novel "Fast Food Nation," directed by popular cult filmmaker Richard Linklater, is now out on DVD. The amount of fanfare for this movie is surprisingly miniscule, considering the worldwide notoriety of the book, the fairly impressive cast, and the steadily increasing reputation of Linklater. Given the actual cinematic result of all this, however, the lack of fanfare begins to make sense. This is certainly a well-meaning movie, with both an obvious "message movie" agenda and multiple character-driven stories to tell, but it all ends up a muddled mess at the movie's conclusion. The large ensemble cast plays a part in many of the movie's strengths and weaknesses, the highlights of which include Greg Kinnear ("Little Miss Sunshine"), Wilmer Valderrama ("That 70s Show"), Kris Kristofferson ("Blade"), Ethan Hawke ("Training Day"), Luis Guzman ("Out of Sight") and a surprise cameo from Bruce Willis.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this movie is that it's not another hard-hitting documentary, but rather a fictional film with a heavy, Altman-esque multi-character narrative. In one story, Don Anderson (Kinnear), the marketing V.P. of the "Mickey's" fast food chain, is sent to Cody, Colo. to investigate a fecal bacteria contamination in a batch of frozen meat patties, unearthed by a grad-school experiment. He looks around the Uni-Globe meat-packing facility, talks with rancher Rudy Martin (Kristofferson) and meat supplier Harry Rydell (Willis), and ultimately learns much more than he cared to know about the inner workings of the fast food industry.

In another story, Mexicans Raul (Valderrama) and Sylvia are transported across the border up to Colorado by a man named Benny (Guzman). Raul gets a job with the meat plant, while Sylvia becomes a hotel housekeeper to make ends meet; both are faced with many problems along the way. In yet another story, a high school graduate named Amber gets a temporary cashier job with the local Mickey's in Colorado, as she reunites with her long-lost Uncle Pete (Hawke), and gets involved with a pack of idealistic college protesters trying to put an end to the statewide cattle feedlot problem. The film basically uses all these main characters as centers of their respective stories, and then goes on to explore the daily lives of many of the characters around them, from the disgruntled youth to the working class, and the sexual deviants among them.

The best way I can describe this movie is as Linklater's version of "Traffic," but nowhere near as focused or provocative. Here, Linklater does not juggle plotlines, but instead throws them into the air with little regard for how they land, or even if they land at all. This is obviously an intentional narrative style for Linklater, and it's probably served him well in his earlier, smaller-scale films, but it doesn't work in this movie, which clearly has a serious political point to be made.

Linklater ends up fragmenting this burdensome political point into multiple less-focused ones, dealing with such things as the working-class system, the country's meat fixation, and the meat plant horrors that come with it. The anti-fast food message this movie should have been focusing on is only grazed over in Kinnear's scenes and the scenes involving two teenage fast-food workers, plotting a robbery rebellion that never occurs in the film. Those particular scenes embody the one big thing that's wrong with this movie: it's all talk, with nothing to back it up. Instead, we're left with endless dialogue scenes with underdeveloped characters we're somehow supposed to care about, coupled with not-so-subtle satirical and political jabs, like fast-food restaurants in the background of every outdoors scene. It feels like two different movies feuding for your attention, with neither one being the victor at the end. The only consistent quality this movie has is its tone, established effectively in the garish, desaturated color palette, the hand-held camera usage, and the jagged editing.

If you're looking for something to give you a compelling reason to never touch fast food again, you're better off renting "Super Size Me," or even reading the book this movie's based on, because you won't find it here. As an indiscriminate fast-food consumer myself, the only change this movie made me consider was cutting back on my meat intake. "Fast Food Nation" is proof that, to send a resounding call for reform aimed at the entire country, unfortunately, you can't tiptoe around it with cinematic convention.