Slow movie nation

Just back from Fast Food Nation and I feel as if I’ve been bludgeoned for hours with a semi-thawed side of beef. Ponderous does not begin to describe this film, and I speak as someone who would sooner eat his own arm than gum on a fast food patty. I know what goes on in the food industry -- one reason I didn't read the book -- and I’ve made my choices. I can imagine that someone thought it would be a great idea to film the book, taking all those disquieting facts that Eric Schlosser uncovered and force feeding them to an audience that doesn’t read. But someone else should have stopped them. I doubt that seeing the film will actually change anyone’s eating habits. It should, but it won’t. And as for the clownish notion (from the New York Times, no less) that this is “the most essential political film from an American director since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911” -- in a year that included An Incovenient Truth -- well words fail me.

[Rating:1/5]