Filmology Rating: 3 out of 4

While I do my best to not eat at McDonald’s, I was still excited to see The Founder, in fact it was my most anticipated film of Fall 2016 and then it got moved to later in December 2016 and most of the world forgot this film existed.  The Founder is opening to little fanfare but the drama dripping from this film should been enough to get any lover of betrayal and the corruption of the American Dream into theatre seats.

Ray Kroc, played by Michael Keaton, is a down on his luck milkshake salesman who could talk his way out of a paper bag but can’t seem to actually convince anyone to buy his product.  Kroc is actually down to his last few quarters when he gets a call from the McDonalds brothers, played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch, for an order of eight machines, making Kroc believe the brothers are making a fool of him.  So Kroc decided to drive personally to California to make sure the brothers were being serious about their order.  Little does Kroc know that this drive will change his life and the lives of the brothers forever.  

John Lee Hancock is an adequate director who makes films that I always enjoy while watching them, but then forget about them a week later. Saving Mr. Banks and The Rookie are perfect examples of those types of films. The Founder is the latest of his films to be added to that list.  I think the performance given by Michael Keaton is good,  but Keaton could act his way out of a paper bag and is good even in terrible films like Herbie Fully Loaded.  To say that Keaton gave a good performance in the film would be like calling the sky blue, it’s just a fact that shouldn’t need to be stated.  The true force of acting in this film comes from Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch.  

Nick Offerman is best known as the comedically dry Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation but he has shown his dramatic side before in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Kings of Summer, so I should never be surprised to see him give a good dramatic performance.  The camera can stay off Offerman and deservedly,  so as he has most of the interaction with Keaton.  The other side of the coin is John Carroll Lynch who I best remember as Bernie in Crazy, Stupid, Love.  As with Offerman I would expect Lynch to use his comedic skills to help advance sympathy for his character,  but you won’t get much of a chuckle out of his performance.  Lynch has a great sense of dramatic acting and sadly by the end of the film feels like a puppy who has had the life taken out of him.  

Basically this film is a less creative The Social Network.  The script for The Founder written by Robert Siegel, who also wrote the screenplays for The Wrestler and Turbo, tells the story as it is.  What I mean by that is he doesn’t go indepth with any aspect of the film, like how businessmen like Ray Kroc helped destroyed the small time diners and helped create the American obesity epidemic.  Those two might be well known to anyone who looks at their hometown and sees many local restaurants with a closed or sold sign up.  The only reason I feel I need to bring this up is because of how smart The Social Network script by Aaron Sorkin is.  That script looks at where we were at as a society in 2010 and how we were losing human connection and how detached we were becoming to everyone because we look at them as a picture on the computer rather than an actual human being.  Both The Social Network and The Founder are dynamic Shakespearean stories of betrayal, But I personally want a little more with my films than straightforward telling of how the little entrepreneurs are gutted and left for dead by the big business greed.    

I cannot tell you anything in The Founder is bad, it’s simply adequate to me.  I can see how many people would enjoy this film and I’m happy that this film got made.  The story of how Ray Kroc stole the concept of McDonald's needs to be known by more people and needs to be talked about how many great ideas are stolen, and those who actually created the concept are left penniless and broken.

Rating: Rent It

-Jonny G