-
Directing
-
Content
Starring: Morgan Spurlock
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Running Time: 100 mins
Super Size Me is an American documentary about the power and impact of the fast food industry in the USA, while showing the direct consequences of a completely McDonalds diet for one month.
This is, all at the same time, an intriguing, shocking and hilarious film. It’s got Morgan Spurlock’s genius sense of satirical humour, however the way that it shows the enormous power of the fast food industry is also absolutely amazing to see, especially from a perspective outside of the US.
Seeing as I’m not an American, I think I found this to be even more shocking than I could have thought. Basically, all the food, particularly the fast food stuff, is absolutely huge! What this film seems to show is that this desire for big fast food is almost an engrained part of American culture, but being an outside observer, it just seems unbelievable.
But it’s because of that that it almost seems totally inevitable that eating so much McDonalds, which we see happens in the United States, has such a drastic effect on health and lifestyle.
And that’s why this film’s clear documenting of the terrible effects of fast food in excess is so effective, because we see so evidently how great an impact it can all have on one perfectly healthy man, and as you see his health and attitude deteriorate so dramatically in the space of just a month from only eating McDonalds, it all gets pretty heavy-going.
However, what this film doesn’t do, thankfully, is go to the other extreme side of the argument and campaign for the abolition of all fast food. While there’s so much criticism and poking fun at the industry, this film accepts that fast food can be ‘beneficial’, or not totally deadly, but its main point is that the excessive consumption of it, which appears to be a growing phenomenon in the USA, can have such terrible consequences.
Overall, then, this gets an 8.3, because it is a hugely interesting and shocking documentary, but Spurlock’s comedic touch to it all helps to lighten everything up and make it hugely entertaining too.
