SUPER SIZE ME: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at a theater near you:

SUPER SIZE ME (Dir. Morgan Spurlock, 2004)

“Michael Moore Kicking Self For Not Filming Last 600 Trips To McDonald's” - The Onion 6/04

I went to McDonald's several days ago. It was around 9:30 AM and I was getting breakfast before I went in to work. I had an egg and cheese biscuit. It was satisfying and filling at the time and I thought it would propel me through my retail duties. A day later waking up to go in the same time to work the same shift I could still taste it. It didn't sit well with me, and I opted not to go back for breakfast there again.

You see the 3-4 block radius in which I work doesn't have many cheap options for working class food. There's a Panera Bread across the street, but a meal there runs like 5-7 bucks. So what can ya do? Morgan Spurlock decided what he was gonna do is do a Michael Moore on McDonald's ass.

So to speak, he was going to make a documentary with quick cuts, a bunch of sarcasm, and lots of graphic statistic info to catch a lot of people off guard with his damning exposé. Spurlock’s premise: eat every meal at McDonald's for one month, going for the super size option only when they offered it.

This caused unsurprising weight gain and liver troubles. Spurlock consulted three different doctors and numerous dieticians both before and during the experiment. One doctor even advised him 21 days in to stop the regiment for his own good. Spurlock wisecracked around the evidence and seemed proud to stick it out.

That's all well and good and at the time I viewed this film I found it amusing but like that before mentioned biscuit later it didn't sit well with me.

Spurlock never comes off as funny as he thinks he is, there was a preview for Michael Moore's upcoming FAHRENHEIR 911 that had the audience laughing like mad while SUPER SIZE ME in full only coaxed occasional chuckles.

Really what the film proves more than anything else is that apparently you can make a documentary about anything these days. I mean is it really that revealing that fast food is unhealthy? For years and years we've seen calorie and fat break-downs in magazines and newspapers.

Spurlock’s simple premise has merit, but a lot of the filler around it seemed like magazine news show blather.

And like many critics point out, one of the key questions Spurlock asks in the first 10 minutes "Where does personal responsibility end and corporate responsibility begin?" he never answers!

That said, it’s always interesting to see somebody follow through on an extreme physical regimen over a self imposed time period whatever his agenda.

To question a corporation's power of a large portion of the populace is a noble cause even through these crude methods (so didn’t need to see a shot of Spurlock’s vomit I have to say).

So overall with a creative use of paintings, old Ronald McDonald footage targeting toddlers, and a good ear for his choice of punctuating music (Curtis Mayfield's “Pusherman,” Ohio Express's “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” and even Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls”) this is a filling piece of film food. It just might upset your stomach and mind later.

More later…

Poli-Doc Power!

Because of the recent controversy over Michael Moore's FAHRENHEIT 911, or maybe because I'm just simply bored here at Film Babble Blog, I thought I'd give a shout-out to some other political documentaries in recent circulation: 

UNCOVERED - THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR

(Dir. Robert Greenwald, 2004)


THE FOG OF WAR : ELEVEN LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT S. McNAMARA (Dir. Erroll Morris, 2003)

UNPRECEDENTED: THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

(Dir. Richard Ray Perez & Joan Sekler, 2003)

BUSH'S BRAIN (Dirs. Joseph Mealey & Michael Shoob, 2004)

JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE (Dir. Alexandra Pelosi & Aaron Lubarsky, 2002) 

THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT (Dir. Nickolas Perry & Harry Thomason, 2004)

POWER AND TERROR : NOAM CHOMSKY IN OUR TIMES (Dir. John Junkerman, 2002) 

Those ought to tide you over until Moore's obviously anti-Bush and anti-war cinematic diatribe gets proper backing and makes its way to your town.

More later...

A Night With Michael Moore: Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 4/3/04

Here’s my report of seeing Michael Moore speak last night at the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest that was held in Durham over the last several days: 

A Night With Michael Moore: April 3rd, 2004

“I’d like to share with you the rest of my Oscar speech…” Michael Moore offered to his rapt audience shortly after his introduction by noted documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker.

The Full Frame crowd responded in applause and laughter. It seems that nobody was unaware of Moore’s controversial comments upon winning the Best Documentary Academy Award for “Bowling For Columbine.”

He elaborated on his now famous statement that “we live in fictitious times, with a fictitious president who was elected with fictitious election results and we’re fighting a war for fictitious reasons.”

Since this happened a year ago Moore has told this story countless times. No doubt that many in the audience had already heard his tale of his being publicly criticized and even threatened for what was being labeled a vicious anti-Bush rant but it didn’t matter to this crowd. My family who attended with me beforehand all voiced concern about detractors protesting the event and disrupting the evening. I assured them that that was extremely doubtful, because Moore would be preaching to the choir.

And he definitely was. Even mild remarks and slight comical gestures got rousing response. It also didn’t matter that the event was a pretty ramshackle affair. Lights would dim unexpectedly cutting off Moore to start a film clip and despite the presence of microphones placed in the aisles questions were randomly shouted out with no sense of a structured Q & A forum.

A moderator might have been a good idea. But again none of this really mattered since the audience ate it all up anyway. Clips from Moore’s TV shows and movies were applauded with such enthusiasm you would have thought they were classic rock songs. That was the spectacle though, the real heart of the evening came from the communal feeling among us all that through all the jokes and deflating of political egos and policies there was a genuine belief that we can really change things.

Moore made a big point out of encouraging everyone not only to vote but to travel to “swing-states” and help to transport others to the polls. Moore wanted to make explicit the difference between “us and them.”

“Us” was not to be confused with what he called “liberal poseurs,” but what he mostly just referred to as “our side” vs. the conservatives. The word liberal has become a dirty word because they are wimps with no real drive he explained. “What I admire about the other side is that they have the courage of their convictions. They are unyielding. They are up at the crack of dawn trying to figure who to screw next.” Moore raised his voice, “our side, we never see the crack of dawn! The only time we see the crack of dawn is when we’ve been up all night!” The laughter of familiarity filled the room.

Moore continued with this diatribe even imitating weak liberals whining “‘where do you want to go eat tonight?’ ‘I don’t know, where do you want to go?’ - ‘let’s get some pizza’ ‘no we had pizza last night.’ You know the conservative they’re like ‘get in the car we’re going to Sizzler! Red meat!’”

All in all it was a very entertaining evening. It was great to see clips from Moore’s little seen Bravo show The Awful Truth (available on DVD) being shown on a big screen and a couple of people in the audience did actually make their way to the microphones but not to engage in political discourse but to simply thank Moore for the job he’s doing.

One young woman was on the verge of tears as she told of Columbine-style shootings happening where she went to school and expressed her intense appreciation for Moore asking the question “why?” Throughout the night Moore gave some of his personal rules of filmmaking and made us all excited about his upcoming film project “Fahrenheit 911” to be released on the July 4th weekend with the DVD video release slated for just weeks before the Presidential election in November.

Obviously he’s got a plan in place and it was indeed inspiring to have somebody encourage others to take a stand and try to make a difference. Now if we could only get up and get to it at the crack of dawn – that would be a start.

More later...