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Dom Robinson reviews
Tartan Video
- Cert:
- Cat.no: TVD 3517
- Running time: 99 minutes
- Year: 2004
- Pressing: 2005
- Region(s): 0, PAL
- Chapters: 16 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Stereo)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £15.99
- Extras: Director’s Commentary, UK Exclusive Director Interview, Other Interviews, Deleted Scenes, UK Premiere Footage,Original Theatrical Trailer, McLibel Trailer
Director:
- Morgan Spurlock
Producer:
- Morgan Spurlock
Original Score :
- Steve Horowitz and Michael Parrish
Houston, you have a problem. According to Super Size Me, you are the fattest city in the USA.
Director Morgan Spurlock sets himself up with an experiment to eat nothing but McDonalds food for 30 days,which is sort of the thing I did when I went interrailing for a month in 1992, but he takes it several stepsfurther as his rules mean that he must always go for the ‘Supersize’ option when it was offered, he can ONLY eatthings from McDonalds, including the water, he has to eat everything on the menu at least once and he shouldeat three meals a day… So, you can see how this would take its toll, even with the assistance of three doctorsto regulate his weight and general well-being.
As the film begins we learn that over 60% of Americans don’t exercise and average just 2,000 steps a day. Morganis told to walk no more than 5,000 a day for this and by the time he’s walked to the first McDonalds from hishome in New York he’s gone just over 1,200, so has to catch a cab and realises the cost of these will add upduring the shoot.
John F. Banzhaf III, Law Professor at George Washington University, who sued the tobacco firms and is nowgoing after McDonalds, but surely those at fault are the ones stuffing fags and junk food into their gobs,as well as the parents who take their kids there constantly. He says people can’t carry out personalresponsibility when most McDonalds restaurants make it a hard job to locate the nutrional information abouttheir products within their restaurant, but anyone knows without reading it that it’s not healthy to eattoo much junk food(!)
In fact, individuals suing McDonalds for making them fat was so much total crap that this practice wasoutlawed. People have a resposibility to look after themselves – end of. I’d give this 8/10 as it’sfascinating, but ultimately we know it’s going to be a bad idea to eat nothing but junk food from anyestablishment for 30 days in a row. Morgan Spurlock justifies this experiment by saying thatsome people do eat all that crap, if not as often then almost as often.
His girlfriend tells us that as Morgan gets fat, halfway through the experiment, he’s starting to havetrouble getting it up! We even see the ins and outs of a stomach-reducing operation, so one guy can’tshovel as much crap in his gob, and while at the start there’s a group of kids singing the ‘Fast Food Song'(I thought that was written for the godawful, but defunct, Fast Food Rockers), they really don’t want to knowwhat goes in the McNuggets…
I’ll be interested to see what the man makes next. In the US, he’s already working on a TV series, “30 Days”,in which an indidivual spend 30 days in an entirely different lifestyle in terms of upbringing, beliefs, religionand profession.
Because of this documentary and the media backlash over the year, ‘Supersizing’ has been canned. Seeingthe size of those cups I’m not surprised. The media complain about an obesity epidemic here in the UK, aswell as it happening in the US, but our portions are definitely not the size of their ‘Supersize’. In fact,there’s been a big increase in documentaries taking centre stage in the last couple of years such asBowling for Columbine,Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalismand Fahrenheit 9/11. Often they can make for far interesting viewing than traditional Hollywood fare!
In the US, as well as this version of the film, there’s also a PG-rated version which not only removes thesingle f-word but is “educationally enhanced”, whatever that means!
Trivia fact: Morgan Spurlock was a New York production assistant on Luc Besson’s 1994 thriller, Leon.
The 1.85:1 widescreen frame comes across very well for this documentary and is well-used. The only problemcould seen to be the quality of the footage but as this comes from various sources, including the use ofa hand-held DVCAM camera for filming, this can easily be overlooked as it doesn’t detract from the enjoymentof the content. Sound is functional stereo only.
On the extras front, there’s the following, sadly none of which are subtitled:
- Deleted Scenes (6½ mins): Four here, all in letterboxed 16:9, starting with a brief one where Morgan shows ushow he accumulated 13 bags of rubbish from all the McDonalds packaging (presumably he didn’t gather this altogetherexactly as he went across different states); we see Bob and Myra Baugher, who collect hoardes of promotionalcrap from the fast food joint; Overeaters Anonymous Meeting shows blurred-out faces talking aboutthe fact that they’re fat; and Molly Cannady who finally broke free of the addiction after all herfamily had serious health problems. One of them had a valve replacement – mine was down to being born witha congenital heart defect, not due to shovelling junk food!
- Interviews (62 mins):These start with a UK exclusive 19-minute interview with the director himself. Again, it’s similarlyfascinating but still fits in plenty of info that was seen in the film. This is the only extra in 16:9anamorphic, while most of the remainder are 16:9 letterboxed.
Other interviews include a chip shop owner who deep fries everything, a PE instructor who insists thatkids need to keep fit to avoid the problems shown in the movie, Don Gorske – the man who had eaten almost20,000 Big Macs in his life by the time he was filmed, Eric Schlosser – author of “Fast Food Nation”,plus a segment showing various McDonalds products breaking down over the course of several weeks.
- UK Premiere Footage (1½ mins):Vox-pop interview clips from no-one I’ve ever seen before apart from Eastenders’ Tracey Oberman(Chrissie Watts).
- Trailers: A 60-second 16:9 anamorphic theatrical trailer, five 30-second 16:9 letterbox TV spots which are allidentical apart from the wording used in the voiceover at the end, and the last one having none, plusthe McLibel trailer (3 mins) for a 53-minute UK documentary about a UK couple’s two-year trial againstthe corporation. There’s no DVD as of yet, but the video is availablehere.
Trailers for other Tartan DVDs are also featured: Coffee and Cigarettes, My Architect, Etre Et Avoir,Capturing the Friedmans and Basque Ball.
- Director’s Commentary :for more info about the film from Morgan Spurlock, and his girlfriend Alex Jamieson.
There are subtitles in English only, there are 16-chapters which would normally be okay fora 100-minute movie, but it comes across as poorly chaptered near the start because chapter 3 startsaround 23 minutes in, so some extra ones earlier should’ve been used to break this up.The menu features a bit of the catchy theme tune by Toothpick, with the options described in amusingway that are in keeping with the theme of the movie.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.