Watch The Founder For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

Powerful

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I had no clue about the start up of McD's, so it was cool to learn the beginning of the story. Keaton really played the grimy and unethical businessman role amazingly. The McDonald brothers also were portrayed well, and apparently very accurately from what I've researched. I'm glad that I put this on. One of the better movies available on Netflix at this time.

Michael Keaton is always watchable and does a great job with the material here. However, from what I have read, the film plays fast and loose with the truth. Kroc is shown as ripping off the brothers, but they were apparently very happy with the buyout deal. It's an odd film - very well made, but not really properly engaging. And poor old Laura Dern gets almost nothing to work with. Difficult to recommend, but also difficult to dismiss.

The late Ray Kroc was a selfish, conniving, hard drinking, ruthless jerk. He was also the driving force behind the most successful restaurant franchise in the history of mankind. And what man, or woman, has not partaken in a meal from Kroc's iconic Golden-Arched eateries? If you've never dined at McDonald's you would certainly seem to be among a minority, as 1% of the planet's population feeds from the bistro's menu every single day.Michael Keaton continues his brilliant career resurgence with an Oscar-caliber performance as the enigmatic hamburger king of kings. Keaton succeeds in giving us Kroc's cold-hearted crustiness certainly. But the gifted veteran actor also taps into the mostly hidden heart of this no b.s. global giant of business, as well. For example, while simultaneously stealing the original passion project of the McDonald brothers for his own, Kroc also literally offers them a blank check to do his bidding.While the guy was by and large a total a-hole, it is not made clear in the film why Kroc did not want Ethel (Laura Dern excelling in a typically natural turn), his first wife of three and of nearly 40 years, to benefit at all from the vast and burgeoning McDonalds's empire when the couple divorced in the early 1960's. Ethel is portrayed as a long-suffering supporter of an endless string of her husband's harebrained sales schemes to get rich. And yet in a scene where Kroc has the opportunity to reward his decades-long and dutiful partner he fervidly refuses to do so. Evidently this is a dynamic that Director John Lee Hancock and Writer Robert D. Siegel collectively chose not to explore. And it is particularly puzzling."The Founder" is a rare commodity-a movie that is damn near as educational as it is entertaining. You may come away not necessarily wanting to have learned what a crappy guy the founder of odds are is one of your fave fast food joints was in terms of how he treated too many people. But I'll bet this knowledge doesn't stop you from, at least on occasion, continuing to munch out on a mighty Big Mac. You want fries with that? Don't we all?

A whole lot of the physical structure of our society was invented, or built, in the 1950's. One could make a good argument that nothing as sweeping happened again for more than 40 years (till the appearance of the internet and everything that has come with it). A great discussion of all this can be found in David Halberstam's excellent book "The Fifties", which I highly recommend. Among other things, in the 50's, suburbs and suburban housing were invented, as were the interstate highway network, the modern auto industry, widespread air travel for the millions. So were rock music and the invention of "youth" as a separate societal group and marketing target. TV wasn't invented in the Fifties but that's when it exploded into a major cultural force by taking over every living room in the nation.And, of course, fast food restaurants. That's what this movie is about - the invention and growth of an entirely new category of food marketing and consumption, which has now taken over the world. That's the basis of the storyline, but the heart of it is Michael Keaton's portrayal of Ray Kroc, the franchiser who took the first steps to turn a single little restaurant in San Bernardino into the McDonald's Corporation juggernaut it now is -- the world's largest restaurant chain and the first of many other such franchises that soon followed. Keaton is in practically every scene (even if just as a voice at the other end of a telephone call) and watching him work is like sitting in on a master class in acting. In his hands, Kroc comes to life as a cocky small-time businessman restlessly searching for The Big Break that will make his career, After a partly-by-chance meeting with the McDonald brothers, who are the true inventors of the fast-food methodology, he sees just what he's been looking for, and from then on he pursues it relentlessly. What we see is that Ray doesn't actually 'invent' anything. But the one thing he is very good at is recognizing good advice and opportunity when it comes along, and seizing it. As it turns out -- at least in this portrayal -- he pursues this ultimate American Dream at the cost of his humanity and even of fair business dealings. There aren't many actors as adept as Keaton at seamlessly inhabiting the inner nature of his movie characters and making them totally real people with all their good and bad sides together.There are a lot of good supporting parts. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch play Dick and Mac McDonald and they're a completely delightful pair to watch (even if they don't look at all like brothers). The scene where they actually invent the best operational layout for their restaurant -- and thus where they conjure out of thin air the essence of the entire fast-food business -- is a wonderfully choreographed bit of cinema to watch; I can't think of anything else like it in the movies. The great Laura Dern, who plays Ray's long-suffering first wife, is excellent but is once again underused, as she is so often. Linda Cardellini and Patrick Wilson have nice parts as a couple who Ray uses as more steps up the ladder.As a story, this film can be seen either as a character comedy or an American tragedy. In the end, director John Lee Hancock seems to opt for the latter.