If you thought we'd never need a movie about McDonald's...well, you'd be right. But for one of the most unexpected films in recent memory, The Founder isn't all bad. In fact, it's surprisingly well done (puns about burgers? Please no). Yet it has a few fundamental flaws, principal of which are its tonal inconsistency and narrative structure. While it seems ridiculous to be too critical of a movie about McDonald's (I'm sorry, but for fuck's sake, look at your life and look at your choices) there's just enough decent plot material here for a decent movie, it just wasn't handled well by screenwriter Robert D. Siegel.
The story is arresting in its timeliness. Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, a travelling salesman whose grandiose ambitions lead him to developing a franchise out of a small fast-food restaurant. As the franchise grows, his success waxes and wanes in turns as he makes business decisions that satisfy consumers but alienate him from his peers, friends, and family. Though, as we know, his efforts prove wildly successful to the protagonist and his company, the original founders find themselves railroaded, usurped, shanghaied, cheated, robbed, and generally given the shaft. It's alternately an inspiring vision of the American dream and a damning indictment of capitalism, with apparently no logical bridge or thematic inspiration behind the shifts. Unless that, of course, is the central message, in which case it could have been more eloquently explored.
Director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, The Alamo, Saving Mr. Banks) does his tried-and-true thing of crafting mythic Americana on screen, one that plays it safe and works hard to maintain its nostalgic illusion. Unlike his previous films, however, Hancock here keeps all sentiment out of his film. While it works for the most part, heightening the tension and keeping the film calculated and cold -- fitting for the monomaniacal character at its center -- it also doesn't work in its dramatic sensibility. We're supposed to feel for the neglected and scorned wife (played by a criminally underused Laura Dern), and the hardworking brothers who actually founded the restaurant (played to perfection by John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman), but we don't because their personal lives are so poorly incorporated into the otherwise clinical script. Admittedly, the film would work without much personal life brought into it, and yet a central twist late in the film is Kroc's abandoning of his longsuffering wife in favor of his colleague's (Patrick Wilson) younger spouse (Linda Cardellini).
The only real reason you should watch this film is Michael Keaton. As Kroc, the famous real-life antihero, he is a chillingly glib and viciously entrepreneurial figure, a Machiavellian conman, "Professor Harold Hill's on hand" and so forth. While the intimate look at his life never gets microscopic, we can understand his drive, ambition, perseverance, and success. And yet, at each and every turn, he defies sanctification. Keaton -- by virtue of his performance far more than the screenplay -- denies our access to his own humanity, resisting empathy and daring us to hate him. Fortunately for us, that's easy to do by the end of the film. Besides him, however, the film is confused and uncertain of itself. Too bad it can't sell itself as well as its protagonist sells himself. Ultimately, as you might suspect, the film leaves us feeling as empty and vaguely unsatisfied as the food its subject produces.
IMDb: The Founder
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