Fast Food Nation

Starring: Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancon, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Ashley Johnson, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Avril Lavigne

Written by: Eric Schlosser and Richard Linklater

Directed by: Richard Linklater

Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Rated: R

Eric Schlosser’s best-selling expose on the fast-food industry gets the big screen treatment in Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation. A fictional narrative inspired by the book of the same name, Schlosser wrote the script himself. It’s a delicate plot, weaving the stories of many individual people into a relatively comprehensive exploration of the many tragedies that fuse into a standard American fast-food meal.

Wilmer Valderrama stars as an ambitious illegal Mexican immigrant who comes to America, securing work at a meat packing plant that provides meat patties for the fictional fast food chain Mickey’s. Ashley Johnson plays a bright girl working the first job she could get at the register of a local Mickey’s not far from the plant. Greg Kinnear plays a fresh, new executive at Mickey’s corporate headquarters who has been sent to the plant to investigate abnormally high amounts of fecal matter that have been found in their burgers.

The film alternates primarily between the three stories with enough momentum to keep the movie interesting for much of its first half. Greg Kinnear in hyper-affable mode makes for a sympathetic executive. His journey into the machinery of the corporation for which he works makes a nice centerpiece on which the rest of the film rests. Valderrama’s journey into the hell of a high-speed meat packing plant makes for an interesting counterpoint to Kinnear as white-collar executive. We see the plight of illegal immigrants get particularly dark as Catalina Sandino Moreno plays one of many women forced to work in a meat-packing environment charged with sexual abuse and drug use. At the film’s consumer level, Ashley Johnson single-handedly holds up her end of the film as an employee at a fast food restaurant. Eric Schlosser’ portrayal of college undergraduates and high school kids isn’t particularly sophisticated, but Johnson’s intuitive performance as a preternaturally wise and intelligent girl makes those scenes tolerable.

Fast Food Nation really excels in isolated moments. Bruce Willis, Kris Kristofferson and Ethan Hawke all make brief appearances that are each captivating in their own little corners of the film, but the bigger picture isn’t sustained. The film feels remarkably fresh and well balanced in the beginning, deftly jumping from one story to the next, but Schlosser loses tight control over the pacing about a half hour into the script. The story becomes murky and lopsided. The Kinnear storyline drops-out far too soon, resulting in a long, painful slog through the depressing depths of the scummy meat packing plant and a rather pointless Ashley Johnson eco-guerrilla subplot.

As an illumination on the fast food industry, Schlosser would‘ve done better to turn the book into a simple documentary. People familiar with the best seller will see competent drama playing out some of the things it describes. Characters occasionally speak factoids from the book in moments that feel more than a bit stilted. In many ways, this is an Oliver Stone-style docudrama. The events depicted represent things that have actually happened (and are actually happening) in fictional dialogues. This could’ve been successful had Schlosser and Linklater made the fictional aspects of the film more striking and surreal to play up the underlying reality of what’s being explored. As it is, the film is too uneven to build up any lasting impact. As a narrative, Schlosser’s book is much more profound in any of its individual chapters than the film is in its entirety. VS