The Founder Blu-ray Review
Brad Sturdivant
April 27th, 2017
THE FOUNDER was supposed to be a showcase piece for the underrated acting talents of Michael Keaton. A way, perhaps, for him to claim that Best Actor statue he should have gotten for BIRDMAN. However, it wasn’t meant to be as THE FOUNDER wastes the talents of its lead actor thanks in large part to a very uneven script that feels like it had too many influences.
THE FOUNDER tells the story of Illinois small time salesman Ray Kroc, who in 1954 traveled to San Bernardino, CA and met the McDonald brothers. The McDonald brothers owned and operated a very popular burger restaurant called McDonald’s and its success was due in large part to the innovative techniques of Dick McDonald. Dick is essentially the father of fast food and implemented assembly line techniques in a restaurant setting in order to serve food quickly. Blown away by how incredible their restaurant is, Ray Kroc convinces them to make him the head of franchising. That sets Ray off on a mission to expand the McDonald’s restaurants nationally and at a lightning fast pace. Unhappy with his deal and frustrated with the slow pace, Ray gets an idea that will allow him to pull the franchise away from the McDonalds and make it his own.
I got the feeling that the filmmakers didn’t know what kind of film they wanted to make or what kind of person Ray Kroc really was. For most of the film, he’s just an ambitious salesman searching for his place in the world. Then something starts to change with how they show him and inexplicably, he becomes almost evil in the third act. Watching him stick it to Dick McDonald at the end felt unnecessary and out of character for Ray, turning him into almost a comic book villain.
To be clear, what Ray did to the McDonald brothers was despicable on every level, but the way the film portrayed the “founder” of McDonald’s was uneven. He almost seemed to hate the McDonald brothers towards the end and the film didn’t do a good job of justifying that hatred or resentment. It feels like a corporate marketing representative from McDonald’s might have had a say in the film at some point, which might have caused the uneven tone. It reminded me of CONCUSSION, which felt uneven as well, presumably because of inputs from the NFL.
Since his comeback, Michael Keaton has been on fire, leading two recent best picture films BIRDMAN and SPOTLIGHT and taking the villain lead in this summer’s SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING. I’ve been happier than anyone that he’s back in the spotlight, but THE FOUNDER is not his best role. The script was uneven, but the way he portrayed Ray Kroc was also uneven. Sometimes he had an accent, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he was jittery and talked really fast, other times he was almost slow. Keaton also added a half-smile at times that was also uneven. It wasn’t a great performance, but I don’t know if it was due to Keaton not being sure what to do with him or if he was getting bad direction.
THE FOUNDER isn’t an important enough story to make up for the film’s shortcomings. I’m someone that would rather eat grass than anything McDonald’s has to offer, so I couldn’t care less about how the restaurant is portrayed. But the film is about Ray Kroc and I don’t think anyone involved with the film really had an idea of who he was or how to portray him on film.
BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: This is a nice looking Blu-ray, thanks in large part to the brightly lit settings.
Audio: The audio is fine.
Behind the Scenes Featurettes (20:08): There are five featurettes that superficially cover various aspects of the film, mostly concerning the actors and their real life counterparts. These are all too short to mean much and I really wanted a deeper exploration of the differences between real life and the film.
Press Conference With Filmmakers and Cast (37:44): The important players from the film talk about the film and what it means to them.
