Fast Food Nation

Strong cast. Wilmer Valderrama proves he’s a lot more than Fez. Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) tears your heart out again. Greg Kinnear continues to eat Tom Hanks’ Happy Meal as the American Everyman. And Bruce Willis and Luis Guzman (a personal favorite) turn in slyly vicious supporting performances.

Cool director, Richard Linklater, who’s mostly hit, but sometimes miss for me. Hit: Slacker, SubUrbia, Before Sunrise/Sunset, School of Rock. Miss: Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly.

And a great book by our Upton Sinclair, Eric Schlosser. If you read it and want more, check out Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. And the author note inside explains he’s currently working on a book about the American prison system. I can’t wait.

So I was disappointed to find that this is not so much a movie as a public service announcement first and a dramatic narrative second. The connections between the storylines are forced. No one story is given enough time to breathe. There’s just too much material to get through. You could easily spin two or three movies out of what’s here: the illegals, Greg Kinnear’s world, maybe the student radicals.

And if you’re going to make a fast food movie, why not go with Super Size Me? You could stick goofy-charming Morgan Spurlock in a cape; give him a frickin’ laser. Or at least a laser pointer. It would be tight. You could make the case that I’m a victim of my great expectations here, and my girlfriend would agree with you. But I suggest you read the book and leave it at that.