Fast Food Nation
October 31st, 2006
Excuse me while I barf. Richard Linklater’s dramatic adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s muckraking bestseller plays like Traffic with hamburgers instead of cocaine. The story, such as it is, looks at the problem of mass-produced, mass-marketed food from the point of view of a legion of characters, from the marketing guys in the boardrooms to the franchise owners, burger-flipping youths, local wanna-be eco terrorists and the immigrant workers who clean the killing floor. It’s the kind of multi-faceted thing that John Sayles excels at, but Linklater’s approach feels less rigid, more off-the-cuff, baggier, talkier. The cast is outstanding: Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kris Kristofferson, Luis Guzman, Patricia Arquette, Ashley Johnson, Avril Lavigne, etc etc. It would be a great line-up for a party, and it’s too bad that the topic dictates that the movie should be a bummer in the end–dinner’s canceled while I try to get those images out of my head. (Fast Food Nation would make for a vomitous double feature with Our Daily Bread.) Looks like I’ll be talking to Linklater on Thursday, so let me know if you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask the man.
Fast Food Nation. Richard Linklater, 2006. ***
[tags]richard linklater, film, 3 stars, catalina sandino moreno, greg kinnear, ethan hawke, avril lavigne, john sayles, fast food, eric schlosser, hamburgers, beef, food[/tags]
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:25 pm
[…] A timely reminder why I don’t particularly enjoy press junkets. I was at the Regency on Park Ave yesterday morning for a marathon roundtable session for Fast Food Nation: Eric Schlosser, Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano, and Richard Linklater. Don’t get me wrong, all of these people proved friendly, talented, and smart, and I’d love to hang out with every single one of them–especially Schlosser and Linklater. […]
March 30th, 2007 at 8:05 am
[…] of the slaughterhouse floor, which we’ve just seen more than enough of (and in color!) in Fast Food Nation and Our Daily Bread. Still, something about this is stuck in my craw and I might give it another […]
March 19th, 2008 at 3:09 am
just watched Fast Food Nation, it’s an impactful flick to say the least… earlier today i passed up a sausage mcmuffin because of it. Evidently it is worth passing up fast food for more than health reasons.