Review

Review Date: 16-May-04
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Super Size Me (2004)

A few weeks ago I theorized that romantic comedies anesthetize us to our drab, stifling little lives; this week, I am reminded again how humor is the sugar that makes the bitter medicine of modern existence go down. The documentary Super Size Me contains a lot of food for thought that might easily lead to ulcers, yet it's pleasant to digest because it's so damn amusing. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's account of how he ate at McDonald's three times a day for thirty days plays like a comedy but offers an excellent overview of America's disturbing problem with marketing, eating, and weight.

The film is a visual diary of Spurlock's terrifying experiment, complete with sidebars on the causes and symptoms of what a former Surgeon General calls the "epidemic" of obesity in the United States. Spurlock begins by obtaining a clean bill of health from three different doctors and then details the month spent under the thrall of the Hamburgler and Grimace: the rules he sets for himself (e.g., letting nothing pass his lips that isn't sold at McDonald's); the early effects of his new diet (throwing up immediately after his first super sized meal); and the myriad problems that develop after just a couple of weeks (rapid weight gain, skyrocketing cholesterol levels, sexual disfunction, evidence of addiction, and liver damage that astounds his medical team). As each day is ticked off on the corner of the screen, you actually feel a growing concern for the plucky young fellow and the present and future welfare of his poor abused body. (This concern is shared by Spurlock's girlfriend, a vegan chef, and his mother, who kindly offers to give him part of her liver if the damage to his own proves irreparable.)

Spurlock uses his personal experience to examine the larger issue it addresses. He hauls out shocking statistics on obesity and consumption. He interviews doctors, professors, the heir to the Baskin-Robbins fortune, and key players in a lawsuit against McDonald's, bringing up the argument of individual vs. corporate culpability. (Predictably, he attempts to interview someone at McDonald's headquarters but is pointedly if politely ignored.) He takes his stomach on the road, films a diabetic's gastrointestinal surgery, and polls the man on the street about what a calorie is. While targeting McDonald's as the behemoth of fast food, he cites each of its major competitors, including the one that capitalizes on America's terrible diet in a backhand way by touting the (in)famous Jared. Through it all, Spurlock illustrates what one person calls America's "toxic" culture, a widespread and harmful way of life that relies on cheap, high-fat food, sugar- and caffeine-filled beverages, and cars and machines that remove the need for daily exercise.

(By the way, a note to the moronic interviewee who can't find any difference between obesity and smoking, and wonders if attacking fat people will become as popular as "hectoring" smokers: if I'm sitting next to a person cramming junk food past his double chins, that doesn't seriously diminish my own ability to do the one thing I need to do to stay alive, i.e., breathe, nor does it wreak havoc on my body as well as his. Get a clue!)

Super Size Me serves up its sad facts with the same air of smart, boyish fun that characterizes its likable star. Consequently, it wasn't until it hit upon the truly evil side of the story that my bile began to rise. This is the way that the food industry, unchecked by the government, specifically targets children as easy marks in its campaign to make as much money as possible. Spurlock visits schools where soda machines litter the halls, French fries are the only vegetable on the lunch menu, and phys ed classes have been ravaged by federal legislation that focuses on testing, testing, and more testing. He points out that McDonald's bears more blame than its competitors in this respect, with its playgrounds, Happy Meals, and spokesman who happens to be a clown. (He finds small children who can identify pictures of Ronald McDonald but not Jesus, and a family that can recite the Big Mac theme but not the Pledge of Allegiance. These particular examples don't bother me that much, but the point is well taken.) It's horrifying yet fascinating to watch as mouthpieces at every level spew the same party line, from a Midwestern supplier of cafeteria food to a representative for the grocers' lobby in DC: children should be educated to make proper decisions about their nutrition, so the companies that push junk on them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through every medium possible have no responsibility whatsoever.

A small, unexpected event occurs in the middle of Spurlock's documentary that nicely sums up his story. One of the medical partners he enlists, a posh nutrition/fitness salon named Haelth (you know, with the a and e scrunched together, which I can't seem to do on my Mac), suddenly closes its doors without warning. It just goes to show how health has become a fancy commodity purchased by yuppies (and not even enough of them), something which the proletariat can't afford and has been taught to spurn as pretentious and foreign. Through fault that stretches from the fat slob at the McDonald's counter to the rich white man in Washington, the U.S. has developed a habit that destroys millions of its citizens, or, in Spurlock's case, gives one guy a serious case of heartburn.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.