24 out of 30 people found the following review helpful:

Another Linklater Gem

McClennan from , 1st May, 2007

Richard Linklater's adaptation is a fictional dramatisation of the non-fiction novel. Playing out more as a narrative on the fast food industry than a critique, the film stops short of being an anti-capitalist diatribe in favour of a simple presentation of the concerns that society shares about such an industry. Following along similar lines to many of Linklater's other works it mixes his traditional free-flowing conversations with tinges of Maria Full Of Grace and Dazed And Confused. Containing some gruesome images the film's strength lies in the free-flowing conversations and the all too familiar ethical choices that the characters face and it's to Linklater's credit that he places more emphasis on the difficultly of these ethical choices than on the emotional impact they have on the characters. It is simple, there's little exploration of the bigger picture and there has been criticism that the character arcs don't interlink which I don't think matters, because the characters are just as much the meat going into the machine as the beef itself. Harshly underrated by the critics it could have been a three hour multi-layered epic that might have failed, instead it's a tight, empathic little film that's definitely worth a watch.

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14 out of 18 people found the following review helpful:

Fast Food Nation

Nadiestar from , 12th February, 2008

All i can say is that i hated this film. I was desperately hoping that it would get better. There were some terrific performances in this film but it was ruined at the end with the horrendous slaughtering of real cow at the end!

Where was the warning?????????

Where was my right to choose to see an animal be unnecessarily killed all for the gratuity of satisfying a movie audience.

I hated it and i hate richard Linklater for making me see this after i turned off when Jamie Oliver killed a chicken live on channel four.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review helpful:

Only for the unacquainted

Mr T from Coventry, England, 3rd October, 2007

There was nothing in this movie that I haven't seen and heard about the fast food industry a thousand times before. I didn't know what to expect when I rented this (having lived under a rock I hadn't heard of the book). There was nothing new here and nothing that shocked or even properly challenged the fast food industry in any new way. This did not stimulate me into deep (or even mild) thought about the issues the film portrays. This was not helped by a distractingly poor performance from Avril Lavigne. Unless your entirely unacquainted with the issues that surround the fast food industry, you could spend your two hours in many better ways.

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7 out of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Read the book instead

Chantal from , 9th October, 2007

Absolutely no story in this film but I'm not surprised. The book is a documentary not a novel and at least with the book you get more 'stories' not only the problem with the meat packing industry. BEWARE some very graphic and gore scenes are present in this film.

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slow paced boredom

pilphus from , 16th March, 2010

seriously, I fell asleep. The story was so slow and often seemed irrelevant to the main plots. A few familiar faces didn't improve viewing pleasure either.

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utter rubbish

Sprouler from , 3rd February, 2010

Was painful to watch. A disgusting insight into the burger industry, but extremely boring and went nowhere.

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*** May contain spoilers ***

Are you sitting comfortably?

CapnPookie from , 22nd January, 2010

Hmm. Perhaps Richard Linklater may have deliberately decided not to jump on the documentary bandwagon, following in the wake of Michael Moore and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Let's hope so, because there has to have been a good reason for this rather unengaging film. Based on the factual book of the same name, Fast Food Nation attempts to fictionalise some of the issues that were dealt with in the book. Where the book addresses a range of ethical issues within the food and drink industries in the US, the film concentrates specifically on the production of burgers for a fictional chain, Mickeys. It does this by weaving together a number of different strands - exploitation of illegal Mexican immigrant labour, the political awakenings of a teenage girl, the (rather wet) student political activism she gets involved with, the might of the marketing machine and, lest we forget, there's a final few minutes showing the appalling conditions in which animals are slaughtered. Actually, there's nothing much wrong with the film, except that chunks of the dialogue sound like extracts from a lecture rather than any attempt at naturalistic conversation. In fact, the idea of fictionalising the events should have made the film more engaging, but somehow it doesn't quite come off. The ending - where nothing changes and things go on as usual - was by far the most depressing part of the film, as well as probably being the part with the greatest realism.

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Powerfully shocking and very sad

JustKewl from , 26th September, 2009

Well, the film doesn't strictly follow the book. that is, the film is not in documentary style. I felt for the first hour this should have been so as the film doesn't make the points about what the book is trying to say clearly. The subtiltes in a lot of the scenes of the film aren't that clear. However, the fact that the director has turn a documentary style book into and an actual film story is very good. Very clever indeed. The story was very compelling, the major points, I'm gald to say, weren't not lost in this film. After the first 1hr 15mins, the film starts to get sad. I was getting quite sad about certain scenes. Towards the end, several scenes were very powerfully sad indeed. Horrible even. Not gory and there's not much gore. Not compared to the many horror films of old out there. But, the images of what goes on behind the scenes were upsetting toward the end. They weren't that pleasant throughout the film. One thing is clear; this film doesn't hide the way we treat our animals and each other!

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