Fast Food Nation - Move Rant

****SPOILER ALERT****

I will give out important information. If you plan on seeing the movie and don't want me to spoil it for ya, STOP READING!

Fast Food Nation was by far the lamest movie I have seen all year. This movie made me long for some excitement from 'The Bridges of Madison County'. I went in, wanting to love this film. I'm a liberal elitist living in New York who loves bashing McDonald's more than my old lady. By the time this movie was over though, not only was I wishing for the 116 minutes of my life back, I was actually craving for Big Mac soaked in secret sauce (Thousand Island dressing).

FAST FOOD NATION the movie is based on the popular book with the same name and the basic and simple story is about how our burger consumption effects those who supply, produce, market and sell the beef.

The point was to show us all the horrors, but the film fails miserable. Gee, the meat plants use illegal Mexicans. Wow, pissed off teens work in the stores. No kidding, the higher ups over look shit in the meat. Maybe I'm just too smart for this film, but the director didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know. Nothing shocking happens. Nothing. Have you people ever heard of a plot twist? Was this script written by an college freshman, trying to impress his professor? Lame.

The biggest flop was the character development. The illegal Mexicans played by Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talan and Fez on 'That 70's Show' are the characters you should probably care about, but in the end I don't. The angry white youths working in the store talk about robbing the joint, but nothing happens. What's the point? Greg Kinnear comes across as the corporate jock with a heart, but in the end, he does nothing to get the shit out of the meat.

The director found some big name stars (Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke) to do some bit parts, which is fine in theory, but the problem is, when you put a big name in a small part, it just distracts me. Find me a great character actor to play these roles and they'll treat it like gold. With these guys, you could see that they felt they were doing us the favor just being there....oh yeah, what the hell was Avril Lavigne doing in this movie? I'm all for 'muscians' (and I'm using that term loosely) jumping from the stage to the big screen, but it doesn't work when they just play a character that I could see them being in real life if they weren't singing a toon or two...hello...Britney. If you're going to do it, do it right.

The only reason why I didn't walk away from this movie was that fact I was waiting for the cow killing at the end...you know, the ending everyone and their grandma knew was coming. You know, the one that was going to show us the awfulness of all this. Like the rest of the film though, this was a big disappointments. In fact, it wasn't bad at all and I'm still craving burgers to this day.

In the end, the one fact remains, if you're going to produce a movie, you need a script. You need character development. The book (which was not fiction) worked. This film didn't.