Cannes diary part five: 'Fast Food Nation' review

Dave Calhoun takes a look at Richard Linklater's adaptation of Eric Schlosser's bestseller.

May 19 2006

The decision to turn Eric Schlosser's popular and incisive book 'Fast Food Nation' - a damning analysis of the machinations of the American junk food industry - into a feature film was always going to be a gamble. Schlosser's non-fiction work relies on cold, hard evidence and some sympathy on the part of the reader.

Richard Linklater's film, on the other hand, which premiered in Cannes today, achieves the exact opposite: it demands an unacceptable level of unquestioning support from the audience and doesn't come close to translating Schlosser's analysis into successful, persuasive drama. Something of a factory-processed turkey, if you will...

Linklater and Schlosser's script offers three stories that converge in a small Colorado town that is the original home of Mickey's fast food chain and the site of a clinical meat-processing factory that feeds Mickey's national chain of restaurants and makes most death-row cells look baroque.

The most well-sketched story is that of Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear), a Mickey's executive who travels to Colorado to investigate claims that a high-level of 'fecal matter' has been traced in Mickey's burgers. Clean-cut Henderson, who's quite evangelical about his burgers, is initially quite shocked at some of the evidence he finds and has a well-played conversation with a local meat supplier that offers a nice cameo turn from Bruce Willis.

Meanwhile, a Mexican illegal immigrant Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and her fellow travellers take jobs at the meat factory; a vicious place where bullying is endemic and unskilled workers are expected to work as expert butchers - and often endanger their lives.

Finally, a local Mickey's worker, Amber (Ashley Johnson) is slowly and slightly politicised against her employer after heavy and clunky conversations with her right-on uncle Pete (Ethan Hawke).

At best, 'Fast Food Nation' offers an amusing if hollow satire on the American corporation. At worst, it feels like a didactic public information film of the sort employed in schools to warn you of the danger of venereal disease.

Worst of all, while Schlosser assumed a savvy, mature and intelligent readership, 'Fast Food Nation' the movie pitches itself squarely at the sort of American teenager who would be shocked to learn that McDonalds, Burger King et al were anything but outstanding pillars of the community.

Linklater does a good job with the worst sort of sterile American locations - the Mickey's corporate HQ, the meat factory, a Mickey's restaurant - and draws all-round good performances from a large cast.

Most impressively, he largely avoids caricatures from characters who scream out for it. It's the script, though, that's truly lacking and hovers somewhere between Schlosser's original book and good drama. The result is quite annoying and, most damagingly, quite condescending.

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