Super Size Me: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

The documentary, “Super Size Me,” features a bit of shocking news. It attests that as a society, Americans don’t get enough exercise, we eat too much of the wrong food and we’re becoming fat as a result.

Apparently, we stuff ourselves with too much junk, we’re carb addicts, we consume too much sugar, we’re too dependant on our cars for transportation, a large percentage of us are just plain fat and getting fatter, and we don’t have the willpower to turn it around.

As a result, tens of millions have become morbidly obese, so much so that you can’t escape the daily media deluge of what can only be termed as a growing epidemic--one that is igniting a sharp spike in Type 2 diabetes, among a long list of other ailments.

The finger pointing that takes place in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary isn’t directed at personal responsibility--which is almost completely, absurdly overlooked here--but at McDonald’s, the fast food giant whose fat-laden burgers and salads, fries and desserts, are apparently a major contributor to the burgeoning American waistline.

In an effort to prove his point that junk food is bad for you--as if we needed proof, as if it were somehow a surprise--Spurlock, a 33-year-old male in “superb shape” (three doctors say so), decided to eat nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days straight--breakfast, lunch and dinner. If he was asked by a clerk whether he’d like to super size his meal, the game plan was that he would gamely agree.

As such, Spurlock gained 25 pounds during this experiment of his, while in the process losing his libido, throwing up once on camera, having chest pains, waking up with night sweats, looking pasty and wan, whining about feeling winded and sick, and essentially turning his liver into pate.

Winner of the director’s prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Super Size Me” has caused a sensation, for sure, but really, long before the expanding Spurlock chokes down his last triple cheeseburger, the film has exposed itself as softcore science built around a sophomoric stunt.

Sorry to be cynical about Spurlock’s flawed methodology, but having lost 50 pounds myself 20 years ago, I know what everyone else knows who has ever struggled with their weight, tried to lose it and then worked to maintain it once it’s off. It’s hell doing so, it takes discipline and exercise, deprivation is involved regardless of what some might attest, and yet sometimes you slip back into old patterns that pack on the pounds. You know, like choosing to have that Big Mac and large fry, which most of us know are no good for us in the first place.

The best part of the movie--and what saves it from being 96 minutes of self-serving, attention-getting hokum--has nothing to do with Spurlock’s new found flab. Instead, the movie works best when Spurlock pulls a Michael Moore and exposes what people don’t want you to know--such as the embarrassing state of our school-lunch programs.

Because of limited budgets and resources, school administrators around the country have allowed fast food chains like McDonald’s into their schools. It’s cheap to do so, the kids get used to eating the food, some get fat as a result, and a vicious cycle is born as they blossom into ballooning adults.

Spurlock’s achievement is that he sheds light on this and other cultural shifts that have allowed fast food to put the screws to our arteries.

Much attention is paid to the brilliant marketing minds behind McDonald’s, with the Happy Meal, the famous Big Mac jingle and Ronald McDonald himself all getting flame broiled in the process. The Happy Meal, for instance, is responsible for luring millions of unsuspecting youngsters and their parents into the restaurant. The Big Mac jingle is better known by some than the national anthem. And that old devil Ronald McDonald is smiling for good reason. To some children, he’s more recognizable than Jesus.

It’s information like this that gives “Super Size Me” its comedic edge and which allows it to strike its intended chord. The film is best enjoyed when Spurlock does his homework--not when he turns himself into a lab rat by recklessly consuming 5,000 calories a day.

In fact, if Spurlock had only removed himself from the equation and focused on the real issues surrounding fast food--as Eric Schlosser did in his excellent book, “Fast Food Nation,” which explores in detail the very real dangers inherent in the fast food trade--“Super Size Me” would have left audiences with something to consider, certainly something more substantial than the whiff of gimmickry left here.

By the end of the movie, some will wonder what point Spurlock was trying to make by making a pig out of himself on camera. We all know that when you eat too much, you gain weight, so what was he trying to prove? When it occurs to you that he may have done this for an easy shot at fame, the movie throws a clot from which it never recovers.

Grade: C-