Super Size Me | Review

Filmmaker puts his life in peril for sake of a documentary.

Taking a full assault on the billion-dollar profit-making fast-food industry is a funny little doc that “super-sized” itself since its screening at this year’s Sundance film festival. Much like Michael Moore’s recent 9/11 un-Disney approved screening at Cannes, both films display how a lightweight camera and a microphone armed with facts is mightier than the bullet or a bunch of charts.

The docu-comedy, is a new genre of documentary film that mixes facts with a cynical and often laughable point of view. It’s a new format spewed from a sarcastic love affair with the corporate world and government. Drawing a correlation between the “Big Mac” attack and heart attacks is this loveable everyday Joe named Morgan Spurlock whose in-your-face style documentary has sent French fry paid company execs on damage control. Using the scientific approach of a laboratory rat

Super-size Me shows our 175-pound hero on his cross nation tour documenting his complete 30-day, 90 Happy Meal journey. Spurlock splices the results of several doctor check-ups with enough on-camera testimony that shows a lot of ordering, burping and tossing one’s cookies; not only does the film demonstrate how a nation has been poisoned by the unhealthiest food on the planet but it takes the pleasure of dissecting the nature of television commercials and how giants preach on toddlers.

When the girlfriend of the documentary subject matter states that she has to be the “one on top” kind of says it all about what kind of toll it takes out in this brave, perhaps crazy, New Yorker. While The whole process of watching a man order food and digesting it and then make funny faces routine gets kind of tiring, and so do his often trips to various professionals in the health field, but the cozy accompanying graphics that trivialize the whole experiment combined with a collection of on-camera surprises makes this an easy watch. Spurlock’s documentary isn’t necessarily enlightening, but it’s certainly worth some of your entertainment dollars. The 140-pound man who’s eaten more than 19 thousand Big Macs and has lived to talk about it kind of mystifies how the body’s organisms can defend against a food that apparently is wiping out a nation. The off-the-wall health charts and collection of facts such as the changing format in drink size would warrant a complete shut-down of an industry and internal investigation, unfortunately, even high-ranking officials in the government that serve to protect the interests of people love the Mac sauce too.

Super-size Me certainly has a had a coup d’etat effect, so much so that a couple weeks after the film’s buzz at Sundance, the profit-seeking McDonald’s corp. has suddenly decided that there will be no more super-sizing offers from the items on their menu. It just goes to show the continual power of film and the kind of impact a 90 minute piece can have. This is a very digestible film, and one can expect to see the guy with a cool name tackle some other pertinent issue in the near future.

Rating 3 stars