Food Inc.

Food Inc. takes an all-encompassing look at America’s corporate-controlled food industry, as director Robert Kenner documents everything from the crops being cultivated on the ground to the consumers affected by the increasingly processed products to the multinational conglomerates who seem to control the marketplace. The film’s inherently ambitious sensibilities initially serve it well, with the emphasis on differing yet compelling elements certainly proving effective at capturing the viewer’s interest right from the get-go. Kenner has peppered the proceedings with a number of eye-opening tidbits that are as intriguing as they are frightening (eg because most consumers prefer white meat to dark meat, scientists have essentially redesigned the chicken to have larger breasts), and it’s also worth noting that the filmmaker rarely pulls punches in terms of exposing the food industry’s shameful underbelly (which, admittedly, does ensure that the movie is awfully tough to watch at times, as Kenner takes his camera into such disturbing locales as a seedy poultry farm and a massive slaughterhouse). There reaches a point, however, at which Kenner’s almost exhaustingly comprehensive modus operandi results in a progressively uneven atmosphere, with the inclusion of several less-than-enthralling stretches (eg Kenner explores the impact that genetically-altered soybeans have had on the farming industry) ultimately wreaking havoc on Food Inc.‘s momentum and ensuring that the film peters out long before it reaches its unexpectedly heavy-handed conclusion. It’s nevertheless impossible not to find something of interest within the proceedings, as Kenner generally does a nice job of illustrating the problems within modern food production and the various alternatives that are out there.

**1/2 out of ****