JACK NEELY has an amusing review of Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me:

Sometimes you sense this gonzo documentarian is tipping the scales just a little. It’s hard to take very seriously some of his vaguer symptoms. When he suffers chest pains and has a “weird feeling” in his penis, you wonder if hypochondria is serving the film’s purposes well.

The fact that some of the most loyal McDonald’s devotees Spurlock interviews aren’t fat at all seems to raise questions that Spurlock doesn’t address. A couple of healthy-looking street kids who love McDonald’s insist that McDonald’s is OK if you get a lot of exercise. It seems plausible and is one of the movie’s several loose ends.

The thing seems less an experiment than a David Blaine stunt. In his own way, Spurlock does point out that living like an American is sort of an Extreme sport.

But the fact is, he’s not really living like an American, but like the cloddish middle American pictured by New Yorkers. . . . But it may even backfire. I haven’t been to any McDonald’s in a couple of years. But by the end of this film, McDonald’s was starting to seem kind of dangerous and exotic, like an opium den in Shanghai, and I was craving a Big Mac. Until Mr. Spurlock reminded me, I’d forgotten how wonderful they were.

And don’t forget the McRib!

UPDATE: Several readers note this headline from The Onion: Michael Moore Kicking Self For Not Filming Last 600 Trips To McDonald’s. Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Greenspan points out that claims of Americans’ fatness are overstated.

And former Knoxvillian Ronnie Venable emails:

Haven’t seen this film, but I gather Spurlock eats mostly at McDonald’s in the New York area, and lemme tellya, the golden arches up here are seriously tarnished. The food, the service, the ambience are soooooooooo much poorer than in the South that it’s hard to even draw a comparison. I haven’t eaten in a McDonald’s in years, but whenever I fly into Tyson and head into town, I’m tempted to stop at the one on the Strip just to remember how they used to be……But then I remember that the Krystal is next door.

Ummmm — Krystal. You can’t beat ten-baggin’. And with free wi-fi, too!