SUPER SIZE ME
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
GRADE: D
Reviewed by Sean Burns
Philadelphia Weekly, 5/12/04

This year's most mystifying movie development is just how many otherwise intelligent people have been falling for this steaming pile of junk science and fake journalism from Michael Moore-wannabe Morgan Spurlock.

Spurlock won Best Director at this year's Sundance Film Festival by videotaping himself eating three meals a day at McDonald's for a month straight, while several outraged doctors charted the inevitable physical damage caused by such a frankly preposterous diet.

I hate to give away SUPER SIZE ME's ending, but it turns out that if you stop exercising and start stuffing your face with nothing but crap fast food, you're probably going to get very fat and very sick.

No ****, Spurlock. Also, dude: The sky is blue.

"Where does personal responsibility end and corporate responsibility begin?" the director asks at the outset. Not a bad question. Too bad his film has no interest in addressing it. So thoroughly borrowing Moore's snide tone and shoddy reporting style there could be grounds for a lawsuit, Spurlock throws up a barrage of tangential facts, figures and mean-spirited man-on-the-street interviews, all the while nimbly dodging any serious discussion of the issues.

Like several other areas of genuine concern, a maddeningly underdeveloped sequence depicting the deplorable state of our nation's school lunch programs is quickly wiped off the screen to make room for more long segments in which Spurlock prances around in his red-white-and-blue bikini briefs while tugging on his new love handles and whining about his "McStomach-ache."

Given the obesity epidemic in this country, we need to start talking frankly about what we're eating (and how little we're exercising--a rather crucial side of the subject this slovenly flick sidesteps altogether). Yet the majority of SUPER SIZE ME is a not-particularly-amusing chronicle of the filmmaker's rapidly declining health (though it should be noted that Spurlock seems to find his own wisecracks absolutely hilarious).

Abandoning any interesting questions raised in the opening reel, SUPER SIZE ME quickly starts wagging its ever-fattening fingers at (yawn) evil fast-food corporations. Here's where Spurlock torpedoes his own thesis, as I don't recall any McDonald's commercials (or executives for that matter) saying that you should never eat anything besides their food, and I doubt many Americans actually live that way.

So why hijack your movie with a jackass Tom Green stunt that all but invalidates any points you're trying to make?

Because otherwise SUPER SIZE ME wouldn't have such a catchy marketing hook.

Spurlock pays lip service to serious issues, but his movie is all self-promotion, empty calories and sugar shock. Ironically enough, he's made the documentary equivalent of fast food. SUPER SIZE ME is as childish and gimmicky as a Happy Meal, and nearly as indigestible.