Rating of
3/4
Informative
Franz Patrick - wrote on 10/29/08
I can’t say all the information that were presented in this picture were new to me but there were definitely some shocking facts that I didn’t know or have forgotten about. I want to start off with the negatives. One of the main reasons why this documentary is less effective than it should have been is that Aaron Woolf, the director, spent too much time setting up everything–such as how the two friends that the audiences will follow throughout the picture, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, planted an acre of corn in Iowa. If they had cut off about twenty minutes from those scenes (like the two playing catch and sleeping with their crops), I think Woolf would have had more room for more in-depth interviews from scholars about the impacts of high fructose diets or presenting alternatives in order to avoid high fructose foods. Instead, the film merely glides over some of the most important topics that are extremely relevant in our society. It was definitely frustrating for me because I major in Biology and I wanted to know more about the issues that they were trying to tackle. However, I did like the way the film linked the relationship among what’s grown in the ground, the economy, and health issues. In a way, this film reminded me of “Super Size Me” because its technique involved shocking statistics and humor. I also liked the way that it didn’t write off the treatment of animals just to meet people’s demand for meat. The film is a little too short (it’s only about an hour and thirty minutes long) and I would’ve liked to see regular people being interviewed to show what they know (or what they don’t know) about the role of corn in pretty much everything we eat. That way, it will show this film’s relevance and urgency. I like documentaries that read like a thesis paper: clear, organized, and insightful. And if I were to treat this like a paper, it doesn’t deserve an “A” grade because most of the time it was stuck on the surface of things. I would give it a “B+” for hitting some strong points but not completely delivering its full potential.
