Food, Inc. Reviews

            Supporting:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105152916

This article, For Health Or Profit, But Not Necessarily For Both, by David Edelstein shows a lot of support of the documentary, Food, Inc. All you need to do is read his opening paragraph to see how he feels about this movie as he relates it to the Matrix. He believes that this documentary opens the eye of the public to the hidden world of the food industry. In his opinion, the documentary does and outstanding job exposing the unethical practices of giant food corporations. Mr. Edelstein was actually so inspired by this film, that afterwards he got his movie theatre to switch from the “giant agribusiness popcorn with the fake small-farmer figurehead” to something organic.

Neutral:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html

This article, Meet Your New Farmer: Hungry Corporate Giant, by Manhola Dargis presents a relatively neutral critique of the documentary Food, Inc. She presents complements about the movie but also complaints that go hand in hand with those compliments. For example, she praises Food, Inc. for Michael Pollan’s narration of some parts of the film. However, she also says that he is never identified when he is speaking which makes it hard to know that it is Pollan’s voice you are hearing. Manhola also complains that this film is no different than previous texts written about the food industry. However, she praises Kenner for his eye catching film and horrific images. In the end, Manhola is somewhat disappointed with the film. She says that it never goes into depth and that it leaves the viewer depressed and powerless with the film’s small, final checklist of things we can do to help.

Negative:

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/item_MzisT9ExiKm8XF4nwWzdYM;jsessionid=7181E154DB04421EF8BEAA8A34E713E9

This article, Bean There, Bun That, is written by Kyle Smith for The New York Post. His opinion of the documentary is that it is repetitive of what books have been saying over the past years and that it is essentially useless because it only reaches a selective audience, those of whom already know about the horrors of the food industry. He attacks many points of the documentary. For instance, he states that the interesting points such as subsidizing corn, fail to reach beyond the surface level.

Mr. Smith is allowed to have his own opinion but I believe he is wrong about the movie’s purpose. He thinks that only people who already know about the food industry will go to watch this movie and learn nothing new. I strongly disagree with him. Every movement starts with education. This movie provides the basic knowledge to start up conversation and then proceed to go into further research of topics involving our food industry. Many of my friends in high school watched this documentary knowing nothing about the food industry beforehand. If our generation is learning about it now, we will be able to do something about it in the future.