cinema lunatic

Ironically, I saw Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me" at a theater pub -- one with seats at tables where you could order burgers, pizzas, fries and all sorts of greasy grub. Not surprisingly, some people walked out of the movie.

What did they think the movie was going to be about?

After watching a news report about two obese women losing a lawsuit against McDonald's for making them fat, Spurlock decides on an experiment: if the food is not unhealthy, you ought to be able to eat it every day, right? So, Spurlock, who starts off the picture of health, embarks on a month-long Big Mac Attack --- three meals a day at Mickie D's, every day --- to see what it does to his body. What he learns as he takes weekly measurements of his triglycerides, and as he looks into the cultural forces that encourage obesity, horrifies him. The maw of hell is chomping on a large order of fries.

Now, some people have accused him of exposing the obvious --- it's no secret that greasy food every day will eventually kill you. Still, I've told many people that I think Spurlock's film was better than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Moore raises good questions in a public arena, despite his playing a little loose with the details --- and really, why not ask the unfair questions, when all the fair and polite ones have failed to yield any answers?

But for me, "Fahrenheit 9/11" lacks what really elevates "Super Size Me:" a strong satisfying sense of narrative. Spurlock's gradual realization that he's poisoning his body is like watching some B-movie scientist slowly realizing that his experiment has turned against him. And badly. His examination of the culture that makes bad fast food more convenient than healthy grub is like watching the hero of a horror film realize that how deep he is in the pit of hell and the futility of escape. Spurlock has turned the mundane into the epic.

He does so with a fun and humane style that evokes "Sesame Street" and TV commercials rather than "60 Minutes." And when you watch Spurlock interview other people, it's telling and refreshing that he seeks not to attack, but to understand. It's a type of interviewing that, if used correctly, gives people enough rope to hang themselves. This engaging style of documentary reinforces, rather than downplays, the enormity of banal evil.

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