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SUPER
SIZE ME
7/10
USA
2004 : Morgan SPURLOCK : 98 mins
In his debut
feature, documentarist Spurlock takes aim at one of the biggest, fattest,
juiciest, easiest targets around - McDonald's - and scores a direct hit.
The result is a relentlessly entertaining - if occasionally dispiriting
- public-health polemic which amply deserves the wide big-screen exposure
afforded this year to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11. If anything, Super Size Me is more focussed and effective
than Moore's sprawling behemoth - and while the film-maker is on screen
pretty much throughout the picture's 98 minutes, it's crucial to the picture's
success that he's a thoroughly genial, likeable, ego-free sort.
 Despite
his easygoing surface, Manhattan-based Spurlock has very serious points
to make about the state of his nation. The obese symptoms of the malaise
are visible on every street - but Spurlock's diagnosis attempts to lay
bare some of the root causes. He's careful to point out that the blame
doesn't lie solely with McDonald's, but given the company's ubiquity and
scale, this makes a sensible - and attention-grabbing - starting-point.
Spurlock's
central gimmick is to see what happens if, for one month, he obtains all
his food from the McDonald's menu. He has to eat everything on the menu
at least once, and he must say yes to any invitation to "Super Size"
the portions. The physical consequences are unsurprisingly dire - initially
a rangy, athletic sort, the 33-year-old film-maker ends up gaining almost
two stones in weight and turning his liver into what one of his medical
consultants describes as "pate".
This McStunt
alone - amusing and chilling as it is - wouldn't make for a successful
movie on its own, of course. But the burger-binge is really only a launch-pad
for a series of tangential reports in which wider dietary/health issues
are explored with intelligence and wit. Especially troubling is Spurlock's
expose of American school meals, in most areas privatised franchised-out
to the lowest bidder with scandalous - though depressingly predictable
- results. In such sequences Spurlock's diagnosis indicates a shocking
abdication of responsibility at the government level that's more urgently
topical than ever in this crucial US election year.
31st August,
2004
(seen 19th August : UGC Edinburgh : public show - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
click
HERE for our full coverage of the 58th Edinburgh Film Festival
For an interview
with Morgan Spurlock click here
by Neil
Young
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