Fast Food Nation

For his dramatization of Eric Schlosser’s tell-all expose of the Fast Food industry, Richard Linklater chose to focus on just two points from the book.

1. The meat packing industry is ruthlessly exploitative.
2. There is shit in the meat.

lthough they’re both very important points, they are stretched past breaking point across a two-hour movie. This means, worryingly, that by the fifth time someone on screen has repeated “there’s shit in the meat”, it’s lost all of its emotional impact.

And though there is a token discussion of the morality of the fast-food lifestyle (courtesy of a brief appearance by Ethan Hawke), this thinly-veiled sermon is so naive as to be offensive.

Heavy-handed and overwrought. I wonder if a documentary might have been the better option for this material?