Fast Food Nation

Now to begin, I need to clear something up. I'm not exactly a "smart" guy. I don't read "books." I'm not exactly "literate." If something can't be said by a fat orange cat in a three-panel comic strip in the newspaper authored by Jim Davis, I don't want to know about it. Therefore, every time I hear of a best seller or any extraordinarily popular book being thrown into a film adaptation, I do a little dance. Where as books-on-tape you actually need to listen and interpret what is happening, often film further allows you to sit back and basically shut down most of your mental processes. After hearing so much buzz about this book "Fast Food Nation" I was thrilled to hear it was being made into a film. I was hoping it might be a form of docu-fiction, sort of like Michael Moore likes to build in his films, except it wouldn't masquerade behind a documentary style of filmmaking. I hoped it would be as hard-hitting as "Super Size Me" which blew the cover off fast food and taught me that fast food isn't healthy if that's all you rely on for a diet (which is the polar opposite of your normal meals involving minimal meat consumption) while quitting your daily habits of any form of routine exercise.

The last two films I've seen directed by Richard Linklater were "A Scanner Darkly" and "Bad News Bears." "Bad News Bears" is an experience I prefer to block out of my mind as I think I would've rather asked Jack Bauer to spend an hour and a half torturing me than think about that film. I decided to give Linklater another chance after "Bad News Bears" and ventured to "A Scanner Darkly" which is another book-to-film adaptation. I actually enjoyed it. Instead of just being a film relying on the gimmick of rotoscoping which I felt "Waking Life" was, the technique added to the surreal feel of the story. I decided to delve into another Linklater venture of "Fast Food Nation" without having read the book hoping to have the whole thing summed up to me in two hours.

The film is broken into three stories that have the connection of Mickey's (the fictional restaurant in the film) fast food franchise. The first segment involves a group of Mexicans, including Raul (Wilmer Valderrama), illegally crossing the border to come to America searching for their dream life. The next segment involves top marketing executive Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear) investigating reports that "There's shit in the meat." Finally, the third storyline revolves around Amber (Ashley Johnson) whose widow mother (Patricia Arquette) is always drinking or going out on dates and receives a surprise visit from her uncle Pete (Ethan Hawke).

Based upon these three storylines and what I learned in the film, I think I can break down the evils of fast food into five points:
1. Illegally crossing the border from Mexico to America is dangerous.
2. Illegal immigrants get bad jobs that are often dangerous, disgusting, and underpaid.
3. Executives in the fast food franchises care about profit and nothing else.
4. Teenagers don't like their jobs.
5. Cows are killed so that people can eat beef.

I'm not sure exactly what "truths" were supposed to be uncovered in this film, so let's explore some of these. I'm not campaigning for political office, so I'm going to leave all opinions and ideas out of this involving illegal immigration, but needless to say I'm pretty sure everyone understands that illegally crossing the border from Mexico to America is not going to be an easy adventure. Next, the higher-ups at Mickey's in the film are the epitome of capitalism and it's what our society and country was founded upon; no "truths" revealed yet. Following that, teenagers have almost always hated their jobs and future generations of teens will probably continue having the same abysmal jobs. I stocked dog food for three months as a teenager at a pet supplies store, how come I don't get my own storyline in a movie? Again, we are still waiting for a "truth" to come out. Finally, the film uses real footage of a meat-packing plant including segments from the dreaded "kill floor." Audiences will see footage of cows getting their throats cut, the removal of limbs, skin being ripped from the muscle, disembodied heads, and organs flowing down a trough. Again I don't know what "truth" this is revealing besides the fact that cows, like every other animal we eat, need to be gutted and cleaned before ingestion. The meat still seems cleaner than many other forms of food you can find around which films such as "Fight Club" and "Waiting" have graphically portrayed.

The only intelligent point of the film involves uncle Pete explaining to Amber that if you're stuck in a small town and in a job you hate, you should probably do everything in your power to change that situation. In the end it felt like a propaganda film for PETA with no new "truths" to me, yet I can easily see this being a "shocking and revealing" film for many Americans, specifically groups that thought "Fahrenheit 9/11" was a mind-blowing documentary that was cause for a revolution, to chat about. If nothing else, I must say that the cast was excellent in their acting and I actually did begin to buy into the characters, but it was more like having a friend that consistently makes stupid decisions and you want to explain to them everything they are doing is wrong.

Also, for no reason revealed, Greg Kinnear likes to watch porn in the movie.