The Founder review

Michael Keaton’s return to glory has been a personal joy. He’s a charismatic actor who can effortlessly work in both comedic and dramatic roles and he can even take a sinister turn if needed. So, when Keaton takes the lead in a middle-of-the-road, prestige picture like “The Founder” I still have enough enthusiasm for his comeback to wince through the movie’s hacky, on-the-nose dialogue and its thematic hypocrisies.

Keaton stars as Ray Kroc, a failed salesman who finds himself at a new hamburger restaurant in 1950s San Bernardino California. This curiously-fast outdoor establishment is run by the two McDonald brothers, Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac (John Carrol Lynch). Together they came up with an expedient burger serving system that optimizes space and labor in such a way they can serve multiple people with practically no wait time. Kroc, who can barely sell a milkshake machine to keep his house, sees this new business as his golden opportunity and convinces the brothers to let him open multiple restaurants in as many states as possible. As Ray spends more time making deals and keeping up with the Joneses, his hubris takes over and his relationship with the original owners is tested with conflicting visions for the company’s future.

Since 2010 we’ve seen a string of these real-life American success stories as told like Greek tragedy to emphasize the cold and brutal nature of modern capitalism. “The Founder” wants to sit at the same table as “The Social Network” or “The Big Short.” It doesn’t, but it’s watchable.

 John Lee Handcock (“The Blind Side” and “Saving Mr. Banks”) is an industry-friendly workman director who can tell a story for the lowest-common-denominator.  The movie doesn’t want to challenge or offend too much, and even though the character of Kroc is pitched as a crude and Machiavellian personality, the movie almost admires his bootstrap initiative and moxie. This, combined with the obvious food-porn around the depictions of McDonalds burgers and fries almost commercializes product while also condemning the means for its success.

Robert D. Siegel’s screenplay doesn’t leave any room for misinterpretation. He holds our hands through pages of thudding exposition, with character’s explicating in broad monologues and quippy exchanges of dialogue their motives within the plot and the movie’s exact themes. You can probably count on two hands how many times the movie compares McDonalds to America and American values. Sometimes this TV-Movie-of-the-week obviousness gels with Handcock’s gee-golly, Greatest Generation, Norman Rockwell style, but most of the time it’s redundant and eye-rolling. 

Luckily Keaton, Offerman and Lynch are the leads and supporting performances by Patrick Wilson, Linda Cardellini and BJ Novak help to elevate Siegel’s pedestrian script. However, the great Laura Dern is completely waisted as Kroc’s mousy and neglected wife.

“The Founder” is kind of a dumb movie but it does what it says on the tin. I can’t help but see a more complicated and nuanced story to tell here and the beats of the plot are so safe and paint-by-numbers that it becomes difficult to swallow its anti-corporate message, but if you end up half-watching this on an airplane or in a hotel room you could probably do worse.

Grade: C+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "The Founder."