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In this fictionalized big-screen version of Eric Schlosser’s book, marketing guy Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) discovers that his new job for fast food giant Mickey’s might not be as great as he’d hoped. Though he and his team helped launch The Big One, the giant burger that’s helped Mickey’s business soar, he learns that the meat used in the burger might have some pretty unappetizing stuff in it. His boss sends him out to Colorado, to check out the meatpacking company that supplies the meat for The Big One—and what he learns isn’t good.
Meanwhile, a group of illegal Mexican immigrants find their way to Colorado, where they can make a good living working for the meatpacking company. But even if they manage to get a job (it helps if you sleep with the supervisor), the working conditions aren’t the best, and the work is stressful and even dangerous.
For local high school kids like Amber (Ashley Johnson), though, working for Mickey’s is just another part-time job. But it’s just not the same for Amber after she finds out what’s involved in making the burgers.
Fast Food Nation is definitely an eye-opening reminder, but it’s not necessarily surprising. We all know people who have stopped eating meat because it requires the killing of animals—and that killing is, unfortunately, never pretty. And although we meat eaters don’t always think about the process, we know it’s there. Fast Food Nation is supposed to shock and appall and disgust its viewers—to get them to fight for change, if not to swear off fast food altogether. But I’m afraid it just didn’t work on me—because I realize that, unless you grow all your own food, you never really know what chemicals and other unpleasant extras you’re consuming. That’s not to say that current processes couldn’t still use some change. I’m just saying that it’s nothing particularly new. Maybe it was shocking a century ago, when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, but we’ve all heard the stories by now.
As for the movie itself, it’s just a little too After-School Special for me. While the subject matter is, admittedly, interesting, the story really isn’t. It’s predictable, and it’s chatty. Sometimes it’s preachy, and sometimes it’s just silly. The acting is pretty shaky in general (though I loved Bruce Willis as the Mickey’s-employed tough guy who’s supposed to keep an eye on the meat-packing company), and I just didn’t care about the characters. After about the first hour of the nearly two-hour movie, I lost interest.
Since I attended a mid-day screening of Fast Food Nation, I was pretty hungry by the time it was over. So I got one of my fellow film critics to join me for a special post-screening lunch at McDonald’s—just because it seemed like the thing to do.
I did, however, opt for the chicken.
