Product Description

Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock makes himself a test subject in this documentary about the commercial food industry. After eating a diet of McDonald's fast food three times a day for a month straight Spurlock proves the physical and mental effects of consuming fast food. Spurlock also provides a look at the food culture in America through it's schools corporations and politics. "Super Size Me" is a movie that sheds a new light on what has become one of our nation's biggest health problems: obesity.System Requirements:Running Time: 100 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: PG-13 UPC: 043396085435 Manufacturer No: 08543

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1464 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2004-09-28
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .31 pounds
• Running time: 96 minutes

Amazon.com
Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, rejected five times by the USC film school, won the best director award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival for this alarmingly personal investigation into the health hazards wreaked by our fast food nation. Under extensive medical supervision, Spurlock subjects himself to a steady diet of McDonald's cuisine for 30 days just to see what happens. In less than a week, his ordinarily fit body and equilibrium undergo dark and ugly changes: Spurlock grows fat, his cholesterol rockets north, his organs take a beating, and he becomes subject to headaches, mood swings, symptoms of addiction, and lessened sexual energy. The gimmick is too obvious to sustain a feature documentary; Spurlock actually spends most of the film probing insidious ways that fast food companies worm their way into school lunchrooms and the hearts of young children who spend hours in McDonald's playrooms. French fries never looked more nauseating. --Tom Keogh

DVD features
Fans of Morgan Spurlock's engaging documentary Super Size Me won't want to miss almost an hour of extra footage on the DVD. Best of all is a 25-minute one-on-one interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, but other interesting moments are a chat with a couple who collects McDonald's memorabilia; an analysis of a supermarket's layout; further conversation with Big Mac fan Eric Gorske and his wife; a look at the deep-fried Twinkie; and a disgusting but funny piece on how McDonald's food rots (or doesn't). Spurlock also provides a commentary track along with his girlfriend Alex Jamieson (you know, the vegan chef) in which they discuss why he included certain scenes, how many times he ate McDonald's salads, and his recommendations for books to read and action to take. And because he and Jamieson received so many inquiries about the "last supper" he ate on film before embarking on his special diet, an insert contains the recipes, including the highly sought-after tofu and vegetable phyllo tart. --David Horiuchi

From The New Yorker
Fascinating and nauseating. As a life-style stunt, the documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats only at McDonald's for thirty days. It's not a happy set of meals: he puts on twenty pounds, develops heart palpitations, and is rendered impotent (much to the smirking dismay of his vegan girlfriend). While even "heavy users" of McDonald's don't eat fast food as often as Spurlock does during the experiment, he becomes an overweight case in point that Big Macs and their brethren have contributed to the supersizing and the deteriorating health of Americans. Even more worrying are Spurlock's forays into school cafeterias, which have become nutritional wastelands. He tells this toxic story with visual flair and the statistical punch of an inspired muckraker. And, if you want to eat something after the movie, be sure to look away during the shots of stomach-reducing surgery. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Do you want to lose weight? Watch this documentary.
Yes. We all know that McDonald's is bad for us. And yes, this is a little bit like telling smokers that they are killing themselves. We know. That's not really what I like about this movie, even though it does take great pains to dissect the marketing campaigns and food production aspects of McDonald's.

What makes this movie important is the fact that it made me paranoid enough about the food I eat (and I keep kosher so I don't eat at McDonald's anyhow) to lose 20 pounds. I don't mean that I turned anorexic. I mean that I actually counted calories, refrained from greasy food, drank more water and ate fruits and vegetables. Spurlock purposefully ate garbage for a month and gained 24 pounds. I used to do it without thinking about it and then figured that my clothes were shrinking in the wash. It didn't happen in 30 days. It happened over the course of a year but all the things that happened to him happened to me. Chest pains. Lost sex drive. High blood pressure.

Right now I'm still overweight but I'm much healthier than I've been in a long time and I owe it to this movie.

Everyone should watch
Every parent, teenager, teacher, doctor, etc. should see this one. Yes, we have all heard it before, but not documented to this extent. It is one man's experiment but quite eye-opening. I wish the little bit of bad language and couple of "gross" scenes had been left out, but I have heard there is a family friendly version coming that could also be shown in schools.

Only slightly entertaining, and worthless as a documentary
Before I saw this "documentary", I wondered "what's the point?" I have been hearing about how bad fast food is for you since I was in grade school (the 1980's), and people have been complaining about McDonalds advertising to children for as long as I can remember. Super Size Me is about 90 minutes of "fast food is bad for you" and "food companies are evil and they sell stuff to children". So to make a long story short, there is mostly nothing new here, other than the creator's "Jackass"-style stunt of eating nothing but McDonalds for 30 days. As a documentary, "Super Size Me" is completely worthless.

The only redeeming quality that this movie has is the low-brow comedy of watching Morgan Spurlock stuff himself until he vomits and bend over backwards to eat nothing but food that is bad for him. (Spurlock's loony vegan girlfriend provides some unintentional comedy, but I refuse to get him credit for that). His stunt has absolutely no educational value, since he never even bothers to drink a diet Coke instead of a regular Coke. He proves that if you purposely set out to gain a lot of weight and destroy your body, you can gain a lot of weight and destroy your body. Does anyone watching this movie really think that anyone out there eats three square meals a day of fast food? Even the fattest people?

Interlaced with short diaries of his horrible 30-day diet are short clips of exploring the American obesity epidemic. They are mostly anecdotal and extremely low on facts. During these clips, he slobbers all over a Left Wing law professor who advises trial lawyers, demonizes Sodexho, and demonizes all American food companies. Has this guy not been to a grocery store in 20 years? The shelves are loaded with diet drinks, low-fat cheese, low-fat hot dogs, low-fat milk, low-fat TV dinners, low-fat chips, low-fat ice cream, low-fat beef -- you name it. Clearly, there is more at work in this epidemic than fattening food, but there is almost no attention given to other factors in this video. He briefly mentions that kids aren't getting enough exercise nowadays, but only spends a few minutes on the topic.

Morgan Spurlock never comes right out and says it, but the message of this movie is "Fast food companies and food manufacturers commit murder and they get away with it because they spend tons of money on advertising and lobbyists". In that way, this film is its own form of political junk food.