Super Size Me: is anyone surprised?

There’s been a lot of positive press for Super Size Me. I haven’t seen the movie, and it may very well be a well-made, entertaining documentary. That aside, the subject matter seems so obvious that it doesn’t warrant creating a movie about it.

The movie tracks the filmmaker’s (Morgan Spurlock) month of eating nothing but McDonald’s food. Obviously, he wasn’t eating McDonald’s salads every day, because he gained 25 pounds and got rather sick. Gee, big news there…

He could have just as easily done an expose on how your grocery store is a deathtrap, what with all of the cheeseburgers and fries you can make with ingredients from there, topped off with a Hostess Ho Ho for dessert. In fact, check out the quote from the NY Times critic that mentions that Super Size Me is a statement of the obvious.

While I can appreciate the sacrifice the filmmaker made for his art, I really have to wonder if he had any other expectation going into this.

By many accounts the movie is a very entertaining view. That’s great… but for me the whole notion of watching a documentary based on the premise that eating unhealthy food all the time is bad for you just doesn’t sound like a great use of my time.