—three sticks of doom

In Super Size Me, Maverick filmmaker Morgan Spurlock embarked on what he described as "every 8-year-old's dream": to eat McDonald's food every day for a month. Morning, noon, and night, the only stuff he ate was food that had been lovingly fried and processed beneath the golden arches. The rules were these:

1. He had to have every item on the menu.
2. He had to super-size every time he was asked.
3. He could only walk as much as the average person with an office job and a sedentary lifestyle (5,000 steps a day).

His girlfriend, who is a vegan chef, was appropriately horrified. Spurlock enlisted the help of three physicians, and checked in periodically to see how much damage had been done. By the end of week one, he had put on 8 pounds. Keep in mind that's more than a pound a day. But that's nothing, because by the end of the month—prepare yourself, please—he had put on a total of 25 pounds. He had also gotten to the point where his family physician became livid and told him "Stop the experiment. Stop it or your liver's going to shut down."

But he didn't stop it. He continued his ghastly regimen for the remainder of the month, even though he had headaches, felt frequent gastrointestinal upset, and (according to his girlfriend) lost the energy to perform some of life's most crucial tasks.

There are a number of highlights in the film, not the least of which is the choice of music. You've got Wesley Willis singing "Rock and Roll McDonalds," followed by "I'm Your Pusher Man," which plays while a sinister-looking Ronald McDonald is frolicking with some kids. You've got the infamous vomit scene, in which Spurlock gets the McSweats after eating a super-sized double cheeseburger meal and then McGurgitates out the window of his car. You've got a grotesque cartoon illustrating how McNuggets are harvested from geriatric, top-heavy chickens. Then there's that lovely footage of the stomach-stapling surgery. You get to see it all from tummy cam—instruments that look like knitting needles are inserted all around the belly and engage in a nightmare dance of orchestrated surgery, all at the speed of nausea. There was a lot of vocalization in the theater—the sort of thing you'd hear in an 8th-grade health class watching its first video on childbirth. People were throwing their arms across their face, shielding their eyes. "Aaggh," they would say. "Aaggh aaggh!" Yeah, it was kind of a gross-out movie. But then, that was kind of the point.

Spurlock didn't ignore issues of personal responsibility, either. But he did discover certain addictive qualities to the fast food he was ingesting (i.e., physical symptoms of fatigue that were only relieved by eating more Mickey D's). And he had a few things to say about the power of advertising and the practices of ensuring "brand loyalty" in children through playgrounds and toys. The film was instructive and funny, and I highly recommend it, whether you're interested in social engineering or just looking for a good time. Just be ready to cover your eyes.

Guy #1: Did you know that a McGriddle sandwich has more fat than a Big Mac?

Guy #2: That's bizarre.

(They both look out their window and see a little kid taking off in a cardboard rocket ship. The rocket crashes into the sun, causing a gravitational disruption that knocks Earth out of orbit.)

Guy #2 (just before his body vaporizes): Well, I guess it's not that bizarre.