This is of course, Morgan Spurlock's attempt to document himself eating McD every day for 30 days, for every meal. At the same time, he investigates the obesity epidemic in the US and how exactly it all relates. The central question, asked in the beginning of the movie - where is the line between personal and corporate responsibility when it comes to food?

The movie starts with the obesity stats, goes through some dramatic ways to demonstrate them, then Spurlock decides to start his regimen by getting a physical in 3 different places. According to all of them, he's the man when it comes to health - good cholesterol, not even slightly overweight, etc. As he starts his diet, he feels progressively worse, even after only 8 days. At the same time as he's killing himself with the food (which he's required to supersize if asked), he touches on topics such as the amount of sugar that's present in everyday foods, the increasing presence of processed foods, unhealthy food advertising directed at children, the decrease in physical activity and the amount of corporate farming out of school lunches. Throughout all this, he manages to remain very funny in his comments and interviews. One hilarious (or uncomfortable) moment is an interview with his girlfriend as she describes the details of their sex life and how Spurlock's penis has been affected by his fast-food diet. He finishes with a final medical assessment which shows that he basically pickled his liver, gained ~25 pounds and raised his cholesterol.

I think the strongest point of the movie is not the horrible condition of Spurlock after he finishes his diet, which is quite over the top compared to an average McDonald's visitor's diet. The first strong point is him showing the growing presence of unhealthy and processed foods, high in corn syrup and calories, all over the 1st world. The second is the power of corporations to limit consumer choice by placing those foods in schools,  saturating kids advertising and attracting kids to fast food restaurants with playgrounds and toys. The last important point is the question that's asked in the beginning - at which point does personal responsibility end and corporate responsibility (which I will assume he implies should be enforced by laws) begin? I suppose the last one depends on your personal philosophy, but a good question nonetheless.

While he obviously has no love for any fast food corporations, he doesn't accuse them of killing children or being the spawns of Satan. I thought the movie correctly lacked a lot of righteous anger which would've taken some of the argument away.

Fahrenheit 911

And speaking of anger, this movie generated a ton of anger before it was even announced. According to scientific research I just made up, just mentioning "Michael Moore" and "Bush" in the same sentence on the Internet would generate enough flame energy to power a city the size of Chicago for 3.2 days.

First, let's get the fact that Michael Moore is really fat out of the way. Yes, he is fat. When he sits around the house, he sits around the house. He has smaller Michael Moores orbiting him.  We got up on his back to get some burgers from Wendy's and my skates went flat, I got stuck in his butt-crack.

The whole point of the movie can be summarized in the fact that George Bush and his cadre suck. They  are inept in the war on terrorism at home, they are failing in Iraq, and it's because they are beholden to corporate and Saudi interests. If you've been reading the Interweb or just staunchly following the news, the movie will not show you anything really new.

The movie starts with the stolen election bugaloo in Florida (by that I mean, Moore implies that Bush stole the election, not that I think the election was stolen). Next, chronologically everyone knows that the terrorist attacks are coming, so Moore uses the space to show Bush going on vacation (46% of his time before Sep. 11th was spent on vacation, according to the movie) to show him as a lazy bastard. Lots of footage of Bush being a typical moron on his ranch, describing his dog chasing an armadillo, smirking, cutting some logs, talkin' 'bout his pick-up, smirking some more, then the fantastic "Now watch this drive" shot. Now, the first hard scenes of the movie are the shots from the 9/11 attack, which Moore begins with a black screen and only audio from the two planes hitting the WTC towers. The first real indictment of Bush comes from the scene in which he is told that two planes have hit and he continues sitting in the classroom and reading "My Pet Goat" to the kids for 7 minutes. IMO, he does look paralyzed rather than projecting calm.

The next segment of the movie is the description of the relationship between the Saudi royals, the Bin Laden family, and the Bush family. The connections are related to mutual investment in various businesses, and a lot of trade missions by Bush Sr. to Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Moore makes only a tenuous link from the Bin Laden family to Osama, insinuating that they have not actually disowned him. In any case, the central issue in the segment is the fact that the Bin Laden family plus some Saudi subjects were flown out of the US on Sept. 13th without questions.

Then there is the description of the fear that's constantly played by the media on vague terrorism threats - here the implication is that constant fear keeps Americans loyal to the administration. Moore also shows how some police departments in Oregon have cutbacks so they can't afford daily patrols.

Finally, there is the Iraq segment, which is probably the hardest part of the movie to watch. After letting the officials make idiots out of themselves by quoting them asserting that Iraq has WMD or that it assisted Al Qaeda, there are gruesome shots of civilian deaths in Iraq, young soldiers talking about riding into battle while playing "Fire Water Burn", shots of soldiers maimed or killed, the bringing it back to Haliburton and Cheney's connection to it. The last segment is about a woman from Flint, MI, who lost her son in Iraq and her grief - again, not easy to watch.

Unfortunately, the movie starts and continues for a while like a dailykos rant against Bush - you may agree with it, but you feel dirty for being associated with the method in which it is presented. I found that while the movie had very emotional and hard footage, the arguments it presented were not very strong. For example, I felt like Moore was linking Bush to the Bin Laden family and using the Bin Laden name as a sort of boogeyman as it has become in our language. If he wanted to show that the Bushes were evil for its links with the Saudi royals and the Bin Laden family, he could've simply shown how repressed Saudi society is, which is what most Americans don't know. The grief of the woman who lost her son in Iraq is very real, but so is the grief of any mother who loses her son in any war, whether it is justified or not. Also, a great number of shots of Bush just being his idiotic self - while hilarious, it hardly makes for a good argument against, say, the war in Iraq. So the movie felt really disconnected and also emotionally manipulative in places. Not that I'm saying that I'd rather not be shown the reality of war - on the contrary. I simply don't think that extended showing of it makes for a persuasive argument - it feels like an appeal to emotion. Lastly, I recall that a lot of arguments that Moore used were debunked (he dropped the deserter claim, for example).

On the other hand, I hope this movie will make people ask some questions about Bush and his administration and why the war is in Iraq and what does Iraq have to do with Al Qaeda, and how good Bush's so-called leadership character really is. Moore presents of good points, and I wish the movie was more cohesive and sound in presenting them.