Cannes. Fast Food Nation.

This "most essential political film from an American director since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, "proves that when it comes to critiquing America, few do it better than outraged Americans."

But the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt finds the Fast Food Nation "disappointing" and "punchless."

Via Movie City News, Janet Adamy and Richard Gibson report in the Wall Street Journal (this one's freely accessible) on how "an array of US food companies are sharpening a campaign to rebut the allegations in [Fast Food Nation] and a new book that fast-food chains contribute to the nation's obesity epidemic and other problems."

Roger Ebert: "The film produces a great sadness and a greater queasiness."

Earlier: Kent Jones in Film Comment.

Updates: Mike D'Angelo, blogging for Nerve: "Like Linklater's other film here at the festival, A Scanner Darkly (which I saw several months ago), Fast Food Nation is at its best when it's at its least pointed and its most shaggily digressive."

Jeffrey Wells: "Traffic with meat."

Time Out's Dave Calhoun: "[I]t demands an unacceptable level of unquestioning support from the audience and doesn't come close to translating [Eric] Schlosser's analysis into successful, persuasive drama. Something of a factory-processed turkey, if you will..."

Updates, 5/20: Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian: "Schlosser said: 'I can't stress how important it was to make this film outside the normal system.'"

The Independent's Louise Jury quotes Linklater: "It's a little interesting. I have never made a movie that is suddenly threatening somebody's corporate bottom line."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "Whether the net effect is total incoherence or "the Nashville of meat" - as Linklater jokingly put it - will very much be in the eye of the beholder. One can imagine this film becoming a campus sensation, or sinking without a trace."

The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Roxborough and Anne Thompson list the distributors who've already picked it up for Germany, France, the UK/Ireland, Australia, Scandanavia, the Benelux, Hong Kong and Brazil.

Todd McCarthy's review for Variety, which DK's mentioned below in the comments, is available to non-subscribers after all.

Cinematical's James Rocchi: "Linklater can show us the motions of every gear in his story; regrettably, what's missing is the sense of wholeness and interconnectedness you get in a film like Traffic and Syriana, where the actions and choices of each individual affect every character, even if those characters never meet."

Premiere's Glenn Kenny: "The picture's star studded cast (Ethan Hawke! Bruce Willis! Wilmer freakin' Valderama!) mostly mouth a bunch of talking points whose themes go way beyond gustatory matters (rather like the dreaded Crash, only, believe it or not, less artful), and by the time Avril Lavigne shows up, the movie is giving off a stench of Check-Out-Me-And-My-Cool-PETA-Friends self-righteousness conceivably more noxious than anything you'd smell on the killing floor of a mass-meat-packing plant."

Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE: "Linklater may be lauded for the film's subtlety, sympathetic characters and meandering narrative, but the story feels soft, requiring more of the bile of Tape and less of the slipperiness of Slacker."

Updates, 5/21: Time's Richard Corliss: "The movie means to be a mix of the sardonic Thank You for Smoking (this would be Thank You for Poisoning Yourselves) and the plaintive exposé Maria Full of Grace (but with the illegal immigrants forced to slaughter meat instead of serving as mules for hard drugs). But in fictionalizing McDonald's as Mickey's while still trying to make all the points the book does, Schlosser and Linklater can't breathe life into any of the characters, content to create stick figures."

The Observer's Jason Solomons: "While images of cow slaughter may put even a Frenchman off his steak tartare, the dialogue is trite and the acting (from Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Bruce Willis and Kinnear) barely acceptable."

Updates, 5/22: Allan Hunter for Screen Daily: "Amusing and informative but also hectoring and didactic, the wide-ranging film is not as tasty as one might have hoped and consequently will struggle to win hearts and minds."

The Guardian's Xan Brooks talks with Linklater and Schlosser.

Updates, 5/23: The Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu: "It doesn't channel or hone its admirable energy half as effectively as Super Size Me or Maria Full of Grace."

J Hoberman in the Voice: "Linklater's panorama is overflowing with good intentions... What it lacks is satiric energy."

Updates, 5/26: Sheila Johnston in the Independent: "The whole feels a little like an especially proselytising John Sayles movie, where declamatory speeches and sketchy characters replace real red dramatic meat to chew on."

Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star: "In this sense, the fast food industry is merely a metaphor for a number of issues both Linklater and Schlosser believe are ailing contemporary North America: We're all ground beef."

Updates, 5/28: Jonathan Romney in the Independent: "Linklater might have done better with a documentary: this was contrived, shapeless and laden with sophomore slacker polemic."

Gary Meyer, blogging for the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Though trying to reach a wider audience with a narrative film is a noble idea, it doesn’t succeed as either entertainment or piece of muckraking."

Posted by dwhudson at May 19, 2006 6:19 AM