I do my best to come into movies fair and impartial. I try to let go of whatever weird grudges I have with a filmmaker or detach myself from any preconceived notions about the film. This doesn't always work. I'm sure some people would accuse me of massive biases with certain movies that I don't even realize. I definitely have my own tastes and bugaboos that I can't get over.
Super-Size Me didn't stand a chance. I won't say I went into the movie determined to hate it, but I was looking for just about any reason to. The movie has bugged me since I first heard about it in 2004. And, I'll save you the suspense, I did thoroughly dislike this movie once I saw it.
To start, it's just not the kind of documentary I like to watch. Most documentaries take two forms: exploration and essay. An exploration starts with a question and tries to answer it with the footage gathered. An essay starts with an answer and uses the footage to support the answer. I like explorations because they come from a place of genuine curiosity and are much more likely to yield surprising results. I'm less interested in essays. Essays can be very good. 13th is a very well-made essay, for example. Essays have a bad habit of talking down to the audience or being obviously manipulative with the evidence. I couldn't finish Blackfish because there was no curiosity. It took one perspective and didn't try to challenge it. Super-Size Me is an essay. Morgan Spurlock knows from day 1 where this is going. I don't think anyone (not working for fast food) at any point in the movie says that they think McDonalds is healthy. So, what's the point of this experiment?
Just about all of
this movie bothers me. Let's go through his rules real quick. 1) Eat McDonald's
for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert every day. 2) If he's asked to
Super-Size, he must do it. 3) No exercise or walking more than about 2500 steps
a day. Look, I get the point. Americans are told to eat three meals a day.
McDonald's is dictating the size of our portions. The average American doesn't
work out much. Spurlock is basically exaggerating how the U.S. got in this
obesity mess. What does this prove though? Wouldn't it be more interesting to
do something to prove how inescapable this is? How about he's able to work out
as much as possible and see how his health still goes to shit? Or maybe he
still eats only McDonalds but only when he's hungry? That is something I'm
genuinely curious about the results. Instead of asking "Is McDonald's a
healthy lifestyle?", ask "Can McDonald's be part of a healthy
lifestyle?"
A lot of the points Spurlock is trying to make come off as really elitist too. He points out early on how his mother used to cook for him every day growing up. Well, didn't that go away because single-income homes aren't really feasible anymore so it's more difficult to find the time to cook gourmet meals? It also costs money to eat healthy. To eat well and healthy that is. There's a large portion of the movie that comes off as Spurlock laughing at fat people. It's really detestable. The whole film has a tone of "I'm doing this for the common people since they are too stupid to know any better".
It's a shame too, because there are little pieces of this that are interesting. I liked some of the stuff about school lunches (although I don't see how "If given the choice, kids will eat like shit" is a big revelation) and the lack of physical education (and how it's tied to No Child Left Behind). It was interesting to see what his body went through after such a dramatic shift in life-style. I just wish he would've cooled it with the theatrics. Like, day 2 when he throws up from eating too much. Yeah, if you aren't hungry to begin with then you get a Super-Sized meal, that can happen. I know the movie needed a gimmick, but it was when Spurlock got out of the way of the movie that I liked the most. I appreciated when he explained what a calorie is. I never can remember that.
I thoroughly hated this movie. Even as filmmaking it's not that well done. There wasn't a great flow to the story. Even Spurlock seemed bored by the idea by the end. There was too much manipulative editing*. I suppose if you didn't know any of the points the movie is making already, then maybe there's some value in it. All the points are pretty surface level, so hopefully you aren't looking for any profound insights.
*Remember when he called all those nutritionists and asked if McDonald's was part of a healthy diet? Could those questions have been designed any better to get a specific answer? In other news, sitting down to watch TV is not part of an active life-style and getting less than 7 hours of sleep a night isn't enough to be properly rested.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
This has nothing to do with the movie directly, but I always found this funny. Super-Size Me was part of a larger wave of bad publicity against McDonalds that led to them dropping the Super-Size option and shifting to healthier foods. Apparently, Burger King took advantage of all the attention being on McDonalds made their menu even more unhealthy, and targeted the high-calorie eaters with great success. That's what you get for targeting the symptom rather than the cause.
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