Director Richard Linklater’s (A SCANNER DARKLY, SLACKERS, BEFORE SUNSET) latest hyped-up film FAST FOOD NATION about the fast food industry based on the 2001 best seller by Eric Schlosser turns up to be all hype.  I have not read the book but given Linklater’s successful film track record, he should have corrected the book’s flaws or at least attempted to bring the ideas in the book to a satisfactory whole.

FAST FOOD NATION begins with fast food chain, Mickey’s executive Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear) sent to Cody, Colorado to investigate the high fecal count in the meat processing plant that provides the ground beef for Mickey’s.  Linklater crosscuts these scenes with Mexicans crossing the US/Mexican border to find work.  There are the Mexican sisters Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and Coco (Ana Claudia Talancon).  Coco and Sylvia’s husband Raul (Wilmer Valderrama), find work at the plant while Sylvia at a hotel.  The sister’s line boss is evil Mike (Bobby Cannavale), who sleeps with all the pretty girls and then dumps them.  At the same time youth do-gooder wannabes Amber (Ashley Johnson) and Brian (Paul Dano) believe in setting the cows free.  If all these events are distantly related, Linklater makes no attempt at linking them.  The film initially concentrates on the Henderson character, even so much as to show him reading bedtime stories to his children and then abandoning the character for a whole stretch before flashing him for a few minutes at the film’s end.  Linklater also introduces more characters like Amber’s mother (Patricia Arquette), uncle Pete (Ethan Hawke), Riot Act expert Harry (Bruce Willis) and more.  Though Willis and Hawke deliver lively performances, they add little to the story.

Linklater’s touches are evident through this film.  His slacker and drugs philosophy are seen through the deeds of Amber, Brian and Uncle Pete who looks as if he is still enjoying his slacker reefer days.  His favourite actor Hawke is in his film.  Like A SCANNER DARKLY and the SUNSET films, FAST FOOD NATION contains scenes with characters spilling out extended lines of dialogue telling of their outlook of life.  But FAST FOOD NATION is the least funny, inventive and spirited of Linklater’s films.

FAST FOOD NATION ends with a new lot of illegal aliens smuggled across the border.  Two children are each given a bag of mini-fast food meals and the frame freezes.  It looks like Linklater’s cop-out of linking two differing stories of the fast food industry and the immigration problem.  The climatic cow slaughtering sequence, guts and all, looks like another cop-out as if to make sure the audience leaves with a foul taste in their mouths, and not because of the other events in the film.