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Super
Size Me
Morgan Spurlock, USA, 2003
Rating: 3.3
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Posted: May 25,
2004
By
Laurence Station
First-time director Morgan Spurlock takes a gimmicky premise (he will
eat nothing but McDonald's fast food for 30 days) and a growing health
crisis (obesity in America) and manages to craft an engaging, alarming,
and mostly entertaining debut feature, Super Size Me. The gimmick
quickly wears thin, but the concerns Spurlock addresses are certainly
valid. If nothing else, Super Size Me should help expand
awareness of overeating and lack of exercise across the general populace
of one of the fattest nations on Earth.
Contrived as the film can be, Super Size Me's main problem is
Spurlock himself. As in, who is he? In the film, he's a guy who lives
with a vegan chef girlfriend and comes across as a journalist, though
we're never told who or what he represents. Googling Spurlock quickly
tells us far more than the movie: We learn that he's a native of West
Virginia who was rejected from USC's film school five times before
moving east and graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1993.
Why Spurlock chose to reveal so little about his past or qualifications
(nutritional or journalistic) is curious. Perhaps he wanted to come
across as an Average Joe we could all relate to. Then again, he might
have figured that being an aspiring filmmaker would have given him less
credibility when it came to exploring his topic. The point is, we never
find out, and that blank-slate approach proves a nagging curiosity as
Super Size Me documents Spurlock's painful 30-day fast food-only
ordeal.
The actual process of eating nothing but McDonald's is entertaining,
but Spurlock tries a bit too hard to ratchet up the tension by visiting
various health experts and doctors who repeatedly warn him of the
dangers being done to his body. At one point he wakes up in the middle
of the night and tells his digital camera that he's having trouble
breathing and feels tightness in his chest. Certainly, if things ever
got too bad, Spurlock would have received medical attention; scenes like
this one seem unnecessary and artificial in regards to the overall point
being made about the unhealthiness of eating an exclusive fast-food
diet. More effective are the medical facts: Spurlock gains 25 pounds
over the 30 days, his cholesterol level skyrockets and he risks
permanent damage to his liver. The medical point being made here is
undermined somewhat, as even Spurlock admits that hardly anyone is going
to eat such an extreme diet for such an extended period of time. Clearly
though, neither he nor the film's medical experts expected a man who
entered the diet in peak health to decline so markedly.
Super Size Me's most effective moments come when Spurlock
examines the broader issues of junk food consumption in America, from
schools that profit from vending machine sales (and thus are less
inclined to offer students healthier dining options) to the practice of
McDonald's and similar businesses catering to youngsters in an attempt
to indoctrinate impressionable youth into potential lifelong customers.
As a debut feature, Super Size Me proves that Spurlock has
potential as a filmmaker. The larger question is whether he'll offer
less gimmicky but equally hard-hitting fare for his next feature.
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