"Super Size Me"

Spurlock is a likable presence, thank goodness. He doesn't come off as whiny or self-serving or even particularly damning of the concept of fast food in the first place. In fact, he admits to liking it. At the beginning of his 30-day ordeal, he holds up a Big Mac he bought in New York's Chinatown and marvels at how beautiful it is, noting that it's the first one he's seen in real life that looks "just like the picture."

But by the end of his stint, Spurlock isn't quite the same man: Filmmaking is both an art and a craft, and grimy lighting and woozy camera angles can be used to make anyone look bad. But toward the end of his enforced march, Spurlock complains of chest tightness and fatigue. He gets winded climbing just one flight of stairs. And he looks, to say the least, lousy: Puffy, pale and depleted, he's hardly the vigorous, cheerful guy we met at the beginning. By the end of his ordeal, this fit, healthy fellow had gained some 25 pounds (we're told it took him more than a year to lose all of it) and had subjected his vital organs to high levels of stress.

Spurlock's personal trial may be the main gimmick of the movie. But ultimately, as interesting (and often amusing) as it is, it feels almost interstitial. Spurlock really does want to know exactly how damaging fast food is to the nation (and to the world), and to that end, he interviews a host of experts, from nutritionists, to school phys-ed instructors and lunchroom workers, to David Satcher, the former U.S. surgeon general, who rang the fast-food warning bells early. He interviews a surprisingly trim-looking Big Mac enthusiast (he eats at least one of the things every day), and talks to a smooth-talking rep from one of the big food-industry lobbies, who starts out blathering about how consumers need to be "educated" about nutrition and eventually gets tangled in his own doublespeak, blurting out, bizarrely, "We're part of the problem, and part of the solution." (At the end of the movie, we learn that the man is no longer in the lobby's employ.)

We also see Spurlock placing phone call after phone call (at least 15 of them) to the McDonald's corporate offices in an effort to reach its director of corporate communications for comment. Spurlock is persistent but polite, and still he gets nowhere. (Contrast this with Moore's shambling into the lobby of GM's corporate headquarters, cameraman in tow, and then professing shock and dismay that he isn't graciously ushered straight into the bigwig's office.)

Spurlock knows how big companies work, but his patience with them has its limits. "Super Size Me" comes across, for the most part, as well reasoned. Still, there's plenty in "Super Size Me" that's more heavy-handed than it needs to be: When Spurlock loses his Super Size-lunch, the camera shows us the chunky mess on the ground outside his car window. (It's the kind of cheesy art-house exploitation tactic that deserves a William Castle-style disclaimer: "No one will be admitted during the terrifying cookie-tossing scene!") Spurlock films a team of doctors performing gastric-bypass surgery on an obese patient, showing a tangle of glossy flip-floppity organs and slimy interior whatchamacallits, all set to the "Blue Danube" waltz. It's a whimsical and flimsy approach -- Spurlock doesn't need to be this cute to get his point across.

Then again, I did laugh when, after having explored the addictive qualities of fast food, Spurlock flashed multiple-screen images of Ronald McDonald with Curtis Mayfield's "Pusher Man" playing in the background. (Incidentally, as Spurlock notes, in its corporate literature, McDonald's does refer to its most loyal customers as "Heavy Users" and "Super Heavy Users.") And Spurlock isn't at all amused by the way McDonald's markets to children, effectively brainwashing them into brand loyalty from a very young age -- even though he understands, and doesn't preach against, the fact that kids do enjoy going to McDonald's. It's part of American life.

Going to McDonald's is -- or perhaps that should be "was" -- part of Spurlock's life, too. His examination of our fascination with, and the dangers of, fast food is all the more believable precisely because, before he OD'd on the stuff, he enjoyed the occasional Big Mac as much as anyone else. Spurlock's girlfriend, a vegan chef, also appears in the movie. We see her urging him, with zero success, to consider giving up meat altogether after his experiment is over. He lets her cajole him, but in the end, he just laughs at her. The point, it seems, is that life is too short to give up "bad" food forever. It's also too short to eat it all the time.

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