Customer Reviews

Super Size Me [VHS]

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4 star:		(129)
3 star:		(59)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(69)

 

 

The current trend towards obesity in the US is not a difficult one to notice, and yet so many people turn their backs on it. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock does just the opposite. He throws it in the faces of the movie-going public with a unique and intelligent fervor, akin to that of Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation. Spurlock states "Super Size Me is one man's journey into the world of weight gain, health problems and fast food. It's an examination of the American way of life and the influence that has had on our children, the nation and the world at large." Furthermore, "It's a film about corporate responsibility and personal responsibility," and indeed this film is just that.

Spurlock spends 30 grueling days eating nothing but McDonalds food, and exploits the health risks accompanying such a lifestyle in the process. Under the supervision of three medical doctors and a nutritionist, Spurlock's health steadily declines, his weight steadily increases, and his cholesterol skyrockets. All the while, his vegan chef girlfriend, Alex Jamieson, is in the background rolling her eyes.

Interspersed throughout the documentation of Spurlock's McDiet are highly intriguing facts regarding the food industry and its somewhat less-than-benign ventures, as well as interviews with key people who have attempted to urge the public to change their eating habits for the better (such as author John Robbins and former Surgeon General David Satcher). Though this film is chock full of facts and statistics, Spurlock is not without witty repartee and humor. In other words, this is not your average snore-inducing PBS special.

I must agree with the criticism this film has received for not being as scientific as it could have been, as his personal results may not be representative of what others would experience (the Big Mac fanatic Eric Gorske is a prime example of this). Nonetheless, his results are still rather eye-opening and almost vomit-inducing. The public should be aware of the things they are placing in their mouths everyday, and the effects those things could potentially have on them.

This is definitely a movie worth buying and watching over and over again, particularly when you get the urge to go grab a meal from a local fast food joint. This film caused McDonalds to put an end to Super-sizing before it even entered theaters, and that in itself should say something. For more information on the malevolence of the fast food industry, go and read Fast Food Nation as well!

Supersize Me felt to me like two movies interwoven together. First off, and most compellingly, this is a documentary about the fast food industry and its role in the obesity epidemic in this country. Although it's an angle most of us have probably already been exposed to, the movie does a good job illustrating the insidious way that the fast food industry pedals its products to the masses and infiltrates all aspects of our American culture. In particular, Morgan Spurlock does an impressive job illustrating the pervasiveness of marketing towards children. We see what today's parents are up against if we try to teach our kids healthy habits. Throughout the movie, we see repeated references to the famous lawsuit in which McDonalds was sued for making people obese. I imagine most people probably have a similar experience to mine, in which I started out thinking such a lawsuit was laughably preposterous, but by the end of the movie I could actually see the logic in it. I wasn't exactly what point he was trying to make with the graphic footage of the gastric bypass surgeries. If it was suppose to gross viewers out, the reality is that any surgery could do that if shown in that detail. I hope it didn't have the effect of discouraging anyone from pursing a gastric bypass, which happens to be a wonderful operation that has helped many people turn their lives around.

The second thread of the movie is the human experiment, in which our protagonist goes 30 days eating only McDonalds food. For me, this part felt like bad reality TV to me. Although posed a scientific experiment, it is clear our narrator knows from the start what direction it will go. For one thing, we see his vegan girlfriend reprove his plans. From even the first couple of days, we get endless shots of him looking at the food and telling us how gross it looks, or telling us how sick he feels. The shock this study, if you can call a sample size of one person with an agenda a study, is that he actually gets even more physically ill than anyone anticipated. Well, he gains weight and has an elevation of his liver enzymes. His doctors appropriately try to coach their patient into reverting back to a healthier diet, putting as grim a spin on it as possible. Elevated liver enzymes however are the normal response of a healthy liver to an acute insult. It's going abruptly from a low fat diet to a massively high-fat diet that causes it. If he wanted to make the case that this was a dire lethal reaction to fast food, we could have checked the liver enzymes of any of the characters we meet in the movie who habitually eat fast food. He would have found them to be mostly normal, since the bump in liver enzymes is a function of the acute change, not the fast food in and of itself. His doctors make the analogy to alcoholics, who get elevated liver enzymes from the insult of alcohol to their livers. But, in fact, it is when an alcoholic binges and doesn't get a corresponding rise in liver enzymes that there is evidence of end-stage liver disease (Morgan's internists hopefully understand this but are either doing their job by trying to scare him, possibly hamming it up for the cameras, and/or the interactions are edited for maximum melodrama and don't reflect the content of the actual visits.) We even see that Morgan's liver enzymes are returning to normal by the last set of blood tests, even though he is still on the diet at that point, but little is made of that in the movie, because it doesn't support the premise that eating all fast food for a month can kill you. His chest pain, which looked like an anxiety attack, and his other physical symptoms such as headaches are hard to interpret, especially in someone with an agenda to get as sick as possible. Then we get to see footage of Morgan on the phone with his mother, her only half joking that she would donate part of her liver if he needs it, and footage of Morgan on the phone with his girlfriend practically mourning his heroic and fated death. Too much. The informational content is important enough without watering it down with the intellectual equivalent of fast food.

My personal Amazon-confession: I love McDonald's, but I do feel gross afterwards. One of my professors in Med school was fond of saying "there's no good or bad foods, just good or bad diets." The McGridle really puts that sentiment to the test, but I would still agree with it. I always hoped he would slip one day and say "there's no good or bad food, just good or bad people," but it never happened.

Overall, a good movie, I'm glad I saw it. The extras don't add much in particular but still a good DVD. For me, personally, I could have watched much more of the documentary footage and skipped the "reality" melodramatics of the 30 day experiment. However, that experiment was probably the gimmick that got the movie financed, publicized, and accessible to a mass audience, so maybe it was necessary from a practical point of view.

I highly dislike McDonald's. No, wait. I really find McDonald's disgusting! I used to feel that way before I saw "Super Size Me". But the movie actually super-sized my feelings about the world's biggest chain of bad food there is.

As strongly as I feel about them, when the lawsuits against them came out I couldn't help but feel that they were a bit frivolous, by not acknowledging the level of responsibility that we all have as individuals for what we put into our bodies. But worse than the lawsuit was the way it was dismissed, which was beyond laughable, putting the burden of proof on the people who sued McD, by partly saying that they had failed to demonstrate that the food McDonald's served was unhealthy.... Just see the movie, and you will be able to decide for yourself if this makes sense or not.

At the end of the day, the disappointing thing that becomes patently obvious after you see "Super Size Me" is that the consumer's health and best interests are not typically at the top of the agenda of the food industry as a whole, and social responsibility is a concept that seems to elude them when the interests of the shareholders and Wall Street expectations start to knock on the door.

What do I think about "Super Size Me"? It is a great documentary that puts the facts about this critical issue on the table, in a balanced way (actually attempting to incorporate McDonald's comments into the movie, without success). Hopefully a heads up and a call to action: watch what you eat and don't entrust your health to the food places. They owe allegiance to their owners, not to consumers.

What can one say besides WOW at the very premise of this film. Mr. Spurlock has done something very foolhardy and dramatic to prove a point... we are killing ourselves with the over consumption of food that is cheap, easy to obtain, grossly over proportioned and harmful in more ways than one. Mr. Spurlock points both barrels at the McDonalds Corp. with this exercise (an obvious and widely recognized target), but it literally could have been any of the dozens of fast food restaurants that populate the urban landscape across North America. To eat only McDonalds food, three meals a day for 30 days is something not even the most die-hard McD's fan would recommend, but to do so under close medical examination is revealing to say the least. And the impact this diet has on his physical condition is stunning. Obesity is a major problem worldwide, and all you have to do is look around you to see the impending health care disaster waddling from meal to meal. I'm 47, and when I was in public school in the sixties I remember perhaps two or three girls who had a healthy amount of baby fat and one boy who was slightly obese. Today, children of this age group are phenomenally large and have already established disastrous eating habits. Eating habits and patterns which will get harder and harder to shed as they get older. The primary difference between then and now? Similar to Mr. Spurlock's experience I can count on one hand all the times my Mother and Father and I ate in a restaurant, and I wouldn't use all my fingers. My Mom made virtually every meal we ate, and there wasn't a fast food joint on every other corner and donut shops on all the others. We were not surrounded by things to eat nor where we bombarded with advertising showing us how happy our lives could be if ONLY we went to MacDonald's and ate things. Our society has been so inundated with the EAT = HAPPY and HAPPY = EAT message that we don't stand a chance when the Golden Arches come into view; "I'm having a cruddy day... but look, happiness is right there on the corner! All I have to do is get a huge hamburger, giant fries and an enormous soda... super size? HELL YEAH!". If consuming enough food to feed four people is clearly not enough to fill your considerable gullet, they'll glad give you two more portions for only 39 cents more.

Bon appetite!

The most shocking moment in this film for me was Mr. Spurlock's interview with the man about to have his stomach stapled smaller to control his adult onset diabetes and lower his body weight. In this interview he reveals the major factor driving his serious health problems was his consumption of three to four two litre bottles of pop a day... and he drank that amount until he was temporarily blinded due to diabetic complications. Whoa!!! Could there possibly be any more compelling evidence that respectable companies in our society manufacture food products that are perfectly legal, produced to government regulated standards, cheap to buy, broadly and readily available... and are highly addictive. Not so you say, it's just soda right? Well then try and imagine yourself drinking 6 to 8 litres of anything in a single day... and then go ahead an tell me it's not addictive.

This movie and the book "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser should be mandatory viewing and reading for all high school age children. If our society took more interest in what their kids where eating before school, at school, after school at the dinner table and then for snacks before bed, perhaps movies of this nature would seem totally ridiculous. Until then watch this movie and learn what "just a hamburger" or "just some fries" or "just a can of soda" can be setting you up for.

I went from 255 lbs in June 2005 to 175 lbs as of today, May 15, 2006. And this movie was the thing that kicked it all into motion. I own my health and well-being to the fact that someone had the guts to make such a movie. I will be forever grateful. Thank God for this movie, it saved my life!!

This is a very good documentary in which Morgan decides to take on the task of eating nothing but fast food for 30 days to see just how bad it is for his body. The results should not surprise you, he gained over 20 pounds and many of his internal organs suffered severe damage.

During his 30 days, he makes a lot of valid points about how the food industry, fast food in particular is only out to make profit because they are in fact a business. They care nothing about the consumer other than what in their wallets. They purposely make their food addictive to keep people coming back. This starts a chain reaction in which people get fatter and fatter which means they will eat even more the next time. While he targeted McDonald's in this movie, almost all fast food chains are guilty of the same thing.

Morgan tried 20+ times to get in contact with executives at McDonald's, but it always seemed that they were in meetings and they NEVER returned any of this calls. What are they trying to hide? Its painfully obvious that they know what their food is doing to America, and that they are a main contributor to obesity in this country. But what do they care right? They are in the business to make money; and making food that is severely affecting people's health and literally killing them is not of a concern to them.

As bad as the fast food execs are, people are to blame as well. Who keeps them in business; the people who buy their food everyday. Either they don't care what they are doing to their bodies or honestly don't know of the dangers. I also found it very interesting that a particular group of people Morgan interviewed didn't know the pledge of allegiance but could recite the McDonald's Big Mac theme song word for word; and people wonder why we have a huge obesity problem.

Morgan did a very good job in not offending the obese people in this movie. If I were making the movie I probably would not have been so kind. Fat people can blame the fast food corporations and other food companies all they want, and granted while some of the blame can definitely be placed there, the main problem lies within themselves. They are not forced to eat unhealthy foods, yet they choose to anyway. And then they complain about how fat they are and why they are sick and tired all the time. Yes there are always exceptions (people with thyroid problems, etc). But for the people that do not have these medical conditions, they should look in the mirror because its their problem and their fault, not anyone elses. None of these places put guns to their head and forces them to eat the food. Yet its funny how they can blame everyone but themselves for something they have control over. It really makes no sense to me....at all. Then to top it all off, they turn around and get gastric bypass surgery because they have no self control or discipline, if that's not bad enough, their insurance covers it!

For me I made the decision a long time before this movie came out to no longer constantly fill my body with the artery clogging, fat filled, grease laden crap that fast food restaurants serve or drink teeth melting, sugary sodas. My fast food visits are no more than once or twice per YEAR, and the last time I ate anything from a fast food restaurant was over 11 months ago at a Wendy's, and even then I shared the meal with my wife. I haven't been to McDonald's in over 12 years and between them and Hardees they are the absolute worse out of the bunch. I guarantee you will NEVER catch me in a McDonald's ever again. I even get a little queezy when I see their commericals on TV.

Morgan tells it like it is, and leaves the choice up to the viewer if they want to decide to change their eating habits. Unfortunately, many obese people will just say this is a good movie and then continue right on eating crap from fast food making themselves sicker and sicker. Only when they are on the operating table being preped for open heart surgery will they realize what they have done to their body.

I get it; as a matter of fact, we all get it, you're not supposed to eat fast food all the time. And I really don't think anyone can! Personally, I loved this movie, but I don't think it had a realistic premise. We all know fast food is a bad diet choice. Unfortunately; the hectic schedule faced by most working Americans these days has elevated the viability of the fast food diet. So it's not surprising that Mr. Spurlock got sick following McDonalds dietary lead. What was alarming though was the rate at which Mr. Spurlock's body started to deteriorate; his doctor was visibly shaken and that's scary. And although this may not be a scientific analysis, there seems to be a direct correlation between busy lives, sleep deprivation, fast food and obesity. In the end, Super Size Me is fun to watch and if you read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and/or watch Super Size Me, or both, you may never eat a happy meal again. You've been warned!

I love the people who attack this movie and say "No one thinks McDonald's is health food!" and "You can eat healthy at McDonalds' BLAH BLAH BLAH. Sounds like the movie hits too close to home, or more like it, to the waistline. Sure, you can eat healthy at McDonalds and exercise more. BUT AMERICA DOESNT DO THAT!!!! That's the point of the movie. And corporation's won't spend a dime to see that we change unless they can see a profit in it. Spurlock does not deny that 3 squares of Mickey D's a day is going overboard and people have to be responsible for their lives. I love the pinheads also say, "You can eat burgers and fries at fine dining establishments and get the same results." How many of us visit a Wolfgang Pucks's daily? Are they on every corner in every American city? SUPER SIZE ME is also about the marketing of fast food. The food, as McD's shows us on a daily basis, is secondary to that happy feeling we are supposed to get from the whole McDonaldland experience. The most sinful thing of all is that the marketing is not directed at adults who can see past the Golden Arches, but at children.
Also, why doesnt McDonald's ever show Ronald actually eating the food? Hmmmm?

Living on nothing but McDonalds for 30 days?
Spurlock says this is an extreme excercise - a bad idea. He purposefully limits his excercise to reflect the AVERAGE American (who gets little). The point of the experiment revolves around a court case where two girls sued McDonalds for making them fat. The case was thrown out saying they could not prove McDonalds was bad for you, or did anything to entice them. McDonalds claims its food is nutritious. He wanted to show the truth in an entertaining way. This is only about half of the movie!

Beyond the grand experiment lies a look into the culture of food in America. How McDonalds entices young children by marketing squarely at them, how Supersizing has lead to a lot of extra calories at little cost to the restaurant, and finally how all of this comes to play out in the schools where kids pick fries as a vegetable and candy bars to go with them. Why are we as a country fat? What are the ramifactions of obesity?

This film delves deeper than just the freakshow value of "guy gets fat and endangers liver with fast food diet!" If you are offended by this film check out the book FAST FOOD NATION which addresses all of this and looks at where the meat comes from! We need more documentaries like this! Entertaining and informative! I'm LOVING IT!

This is a very, very funny movie. I was lucky to see it in movie form, so I can't tell you about the extras, but it was outstanding. I personally do not see the movie as an attack on mcdonalds, as an attack on the commericalization of fast food. the director does a great job detailing the attraction of fast food. I was also amazed at the damage he did to himself during the movie. eating the number of calories in both carbs and fat was enough to kill a horse!!!! He also made a star out of the gentlemen from nevada who eats nothing but big macs. the guy is skinny as a rail, but he only eats big macs. He skips the fries, and drinks diet coke!!

so remember moderation is a good thing:-)