Fast Food Nation Sucks

OK, I know this movie came out last year, but I just saw Fast Food Nation and it SUCKS! I was dubious when I had seen the previews for the movie because it was a work of fiction whereas the book written by Eric Schlosser is a really good hunk of research and intriguing nonfiction about the history, growth and impact of the fast food industry. I thought that with the right elements and style, it could still be a good movie. I was terribly wrong.

So instead of making a documentary or even a documentary style drama, the writers/creators decided to throw out the book and just keep the name. One of those writers was Schlosser. What kind of jerk is he? Here he is thinking,

"I'll just use the famous title of my great book and then put out a piece of character driven schlock to show what a great screenwriter that I can be."

Oh and he tosses in some big names to make sure to attract an audience. COME ON! Ethan Hawke playing an anti-establishment, between jobs, but still hot dude. Hmmm, where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, Reality Bites!

So I move onto the movie's problems. First of all, it's about 3 main stories: illegal immigrants go to meat packing plants, teenage fast food workers and a deer-in-the-lights marketing guy from a fake fast food place. All these stories have serious flaws and none have a point in the end.

1. Illegals serious flaw: They work in a meat packing plant. It's the cleanest factory that I've ever seen. Apparently, the film crew was able to work in a real plant that only processes about 1/10 of the cows than the big plants on which they were commenting. There was no blood on the floor and everyone's uniforms were sparkling white. The one injury they showed of a guy falling into a machine while cleaning it, just played like a dangerous job accident, rather than malicious negligence on the part of the plant.

2. The teenage fast food worker: None of them ate the food. One girl had some ice-tea drink, but that was it. Usually they eat the food and everyday. Also, there were never any others but teenagers working in the fast food restaurant. Even since I was a teenager, I don't remember the seeing only teenagers working fast food; maybe that still happens at In'N'Out. You have your old people, the middle-aged manager types, the people who can't speak English except for the menu items... Un estrawberry Chake, un fry, un amburger. I love hearing that in the drive-thru!

3. Fast food marketing dude: Can't believe there's shit in the meat. Eats at the fast food place everyday that he's visiting the meat plant town even though he knows there's shit in the meat. Why would the company send a marketing guy to find out why there is shit in the meat at the packing plant? Hello, they wouldn't. And then he just disappears halfway through the movie and his story is over without any sort of report to the company.

4. The butchering scene: It's at the very end that you see a cow go from alive to carved up. Well the cow dies the first time they get him with the electric hammer (apparently that doesn't always happen). There wasn't much blood. It looked very clean and efficient. If you're not a vegetarian, you really shouldn't be grossed out by this anymore then seeing someone get dismembered in a horror movie.

5. All the missing components: The fast food industry has changed the way all there ingredients are produced just by the shear volume of market share that they have. The conditions in a plant are dangerous because the line moves too fast for the workers in order to keep up with the demand of the consumers. The fast food industry shapes the way a major percentage of America eats while contributing significantly to obesity (I didn't see one morbidly obese person in the fast food place in the movie, set in some fake town in Colorado). Working in a fast food place sucks.

Usually, I'm not so ramped up about book to movie adaptations, because they are different media and it's hard to always stay true to the book in a movie. But this was a book that had an important message that the movie could have brought to a broader audience and Schlosser squandered that opportunity for his own vanity.

There's so much more.

READ THE BOOK. SCREW THE MOVIE.

Oh and this was a freebie from Blockbuster. That presents the issue of saying to myself, "hey it's free, I'll give it a chance." I'll need to stop myself from following that impulse, because it led me to this movie along with Black Snake Moan. Don't waste your time on that one either unless you want to see Christina Ricci half naked for 2/3 of the movie. Actually if just you want to do that, just go to the good ole reliable internet.