Review

Review Date: 26-November-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Fast Food Nation (2006)

It may be harsh to call "Fast Food Nation" "junk," but I'm going to do it anyway. I am not quite sure what I expected from Richard Linklater's adaptation of Eric Schlosser's best-selling book (which I haven't read), but this isn't it. This is a boring movie, a bleak movie, a movie that leaves you wondering why someone as smart as Linklater bothered to take the time. It seems to aim for insight and illumination (the title sounds like a bold thesis), yet nothing about it inspires surprise, indignation, or any degree of attention.

"Fast Food Nation" comprises three separate stories surrounding a fictional burger chain called "Mickey's." The first deals with a Mickey's executive (Greg Kinnear) who is sent to Colorado to investigate large amounts of fecal coliform detected in their meat. The second follows a trio of illegal Mexican immigrants who work at the packing plant that supplies Mickey's burgers: a young couple with American dreams (Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno) and a determined woman (Ana Claudia Talancón) who falls in with the plant's predatory foreman (Bobby Cannavale). The third involves a teenaged girl (Ashley Johnson) who works behind a Mickey's counter and begins to develop a social consciousness antithetical to her job.

In their disjointed, almost casual unfolding, these tales don't paint a compelling picture of why the United States might be called a "fast food nation" or what makes such a nation undesirable (which I assume was Schlosser's point). They offer some human interest but not much information. That companies value profit above all other considerations seems elementary. That the slaughter of cattle entails entrails should shock no one. That immigrants are subject to abuse is hardly startling or specific to the fast food industry. Yet these are the lessons of the film, and they achieve potency in only a couple of monologues by secondary characters. One comes from Kris Kristofferson as a rancher who sees the packing plant as a mean, cruel place; the other is delivered by Bruce Willis as the liaison between Mickey's and the packers who warns Kinnear to back off. Among the leads, Johnson shines as a caring person trying to figure out how the world works, but she doesn't brighten the movie as a whole. Her story suggests that the ideals of youth are foolish and adults become sellouts in the end. This is the most cynical of the movie's messages which, again, isn't insightful or related to the titular theme. "Fast Food Nation" plays like the unfocused, sullen views of someone who dislikes "the system" but doesn't believe in change. There's not much meat to its bones.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.