Fast Food Nation - I've lost my appetite!

Who: Katie
What: Fast Food Nation
Where: Home - rented via Netflix
Why:  Two or three years ago, I read Fast Food Nation, which is a non-fiction eye-opening study of the fast food industry from the marketing to a stomach turning journey of how things get from cow to hamburger patty.  The fact that this was turned into a full length feature film was surprising to me so I rented it without seeing the trailer.  The film, in collaboration with the original author, made a fictionalized tale highlighting the key issues in the fast food industry - marketing, teenage workers, poor quality meat, and undocumented workers in harsh/unsafe conditions.  Overall, the film covered these points and wove them into a story.  However, the fictionalized portion of the film left me wondering if audiences would think this was over dramatized, exaggerations.  

All though true to the slaughter process, I turned green enough reading the book and seeing all the blood and guts was enough to insure that red meat is back off my diet again for awhile.

Fast Food Nation is not necessarily a film to be enjoyed.  The book is a much better told story and much more detailed.  The ensemble cast included cameos by Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, and Avril Lavigne amongst others, but the stunt casting seemed forced and unnecessarily distracting.