Earlier this month I was driving back to my home in New Jersey from Durham, North Carolina's Full Frame Fest. A long slog on I-95, even armed to the teeth with Elvis Costello CDs, requires a regular infusion of fuel. The roads that intersect I-95 are liberally peppered with purveyors of food, all advertised via helpful "Food Exit156" signs posted by the various highway authorities, so no one need starve. For most people, the assurance of a McDonald's, or a Wendy's, or a Burger King at the next exit is a comfort. For what we get there may not be good, but at least it's familiar. No longer are quaint local eateries part of the landscape of road travel. Now, Americans want the tried and true.

That is, unless you've just sat through a screening the day before of Morgan Spurlock's hilarious and harrowing new film, SUPER SIZE ME. In that case, perusing the menu at a Wendy's feels like navigating a list of weapons of mass destruction; said mass referring to the human liver or perhaps another vital organ. In that case, an undressed mandarin chicken salad of necessity becomes finger food. And just for the record, said salad purchased in Quantico, Virginia, will last you well into Maryland.

Inspired by a lawsuit (since thrown out of court) filed by the parents of two girls, who claimed that McDonald's and two of its restaurants in the Bronx failed to disclose clearly and conspicuously the ingredients and effects of its food and should therefore be held accountable for the girls' obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol, director and gadfly Morgan Spurlock set out to see what would happen to someone who ate nothing but McDonald's food for a month.

Unaware initially of the extent to which he was risking his health for "science", Spurlock nevertheless enlisted a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist, and an internist to monitor his health during this experiment. At 6'2", 185 pounds, of average to above-average fitness at the beginning, and with a live-in girlfriend who's also a vegan chef, one would expect such a diet to be at the very least a shock to the system. Sure enough, a few days later, two double quarter-pounders and a super-size fries are followed by "McStomachache, McTwitches, and McSweats, followed by the McPuke" -- all caught on camera -- just one of three scenes which perhaps show us more than we ever wanted to know about bodily functions.

If the film were simply about Spurlock's journey through bad food and alarmingly deteriorating health (by day 21 and close to liver failure, he is advised to stop immediately by his appalled cardiologist, who bears an unfortunate facial resemblance to Saddam Hussein), it would be simply an account of a goofball prank fallen prey to the Law of Unintended Consequences. But Spurlock took his experiment further, exploring the very nature of fast food culture in the U.S. By traveling to 20 cities, including Houston, the fattest city in America, and interviewing Surgeon Generals, gym teachers, school food service workers, elementary school principals, schoolchildren, lawmakers, and legislators, he has compiled a compelling case that the ubiquity of fast food and its sugary relatives -- soda, candy, and snack cake -- are a primary factor in the rise in obesity in this country.

From Spurlock's film we learn just what goes into Chicken McNuggets. We see schoolchildren who identify George Washington as the guy who freed the slaves, and identify Jesus as George W. Bush (a terrifying thought all by itself, though I do know some adults who actually believe this is so), but can all identify Ronald McDonald. We see the fast food-like meals the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides for school lunches, and by contrast, a school for children with behavioral problems in Wisconsin in which these meals are replaced by freshly prepared foods with an emphasis on fruits and vegetables -- with a result of a marked decrease in behavioral problems -- at a cost similar to the fat-and-sugar-laden meals provided by other schools. Physicians tell us how Naloxone, a drug used to treat opiate addiction, also blocks interest in chocolate.

Spurlock has clearly studied his Michael Moore very carefully, for SUPER SIZE ME is clearly a close relative to Moore's tub-thumping documentaries. Where this film differs from Moore's, however, is that unlike Moore, Spurlock just isn't an angry guy. He's a funny, engaging, affable, sometimes goofy screen presence. There's no sense of martyrdom, of sacrificing himself for science in this experiment in self-destruction; no sense of "Look what I'm doing for you!". Instead, the parts of the film dealing with Spurlock himself come across more as an adolescent prank than as an attempt to prove a point. Yet the point is made, through well-compiled expert testimony and meticulously-gathered statistics, all set against a backdrop of bright colors, terrific musical accompaniment by Steven Horowitz, Michael Parrish,and Folkfoot, and a evilly catchy title song written by Spurlock and Doug Ray. The whole endeavor is suffused with an ever-present good humor, so that SUPER SIZE ME is always entertaining and never turns off the audience with polemics.

Spurlock has said that he's not singling out McDonald's as Public Health Enemy #1; certainly not in a country where there is a soft drink vending machine for every 97 people. But with 43% of the fast food market, and the pioneer of the Super Size option, McDonald's is a microcosm of everything wrong with the fast food industry. Are we required to eat this stuff? Of course not. But when it's virtually impossible to obtain a meal on the road that is NOT a fast food meal, and even hospitals have capitulated to the quick, easy, and cheap lure of McDonald's, the question of whether fast food has become so pervasive as to be unavoidable is a valid one. Meanwhile, SUPER SIZE ME hasn't even opened outside of the festival circuit yet, and McDonald's has already announced that it will phase out its super size option by the end of 2004. McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker calls this phase-out "a component of this overall simplification, menu and balanced lifestyle strategy" and insists that it has "nothing to do with that (film) whatsoever."

-- Jill Cozzi

Review text copyright © 2004 Mixed Reviews. All rights reserved. Reproduction of text in whole or in part in any form or in any medium without express written permission of Mixed Reviews or the author is prohibited.

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