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Ray Kroc was a travelling businessman, desperately trying to offload milkshake machines to diners across the States. Out of the blue, one company made an order for six machines, and at first believing it to be an administrative error, for nobody needs that many milkshakes – when the opportunist arrives at the family-run, California based establishment he could see exactly why they were bringing in so many punters.
McDonald’s was set up by brothers Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac McDonald (John Carroll Lynch), who appeared to have found a gap in the market, and an unprecedented system to ensure customers have their hamburgers within a minute. Before this, diners would often have half an hour waits, and complex menus, and would attract the wrong type of crowd (teenagers). McDonald’s is different, it’s all about speed, simplicity – and aimed at all the family. Kroc knows a good thing when he sees one, and so proposes the idea of a franchise to the somewhat reluctant siblings.
It’s only after the film has finished you realised that the key, and the paramount focus, should’ve been on sheer uncompromising business of the film’s leading character. It should be played on more, for his unethical means of business and the way he will walk over anybody to get what he wants is the most intriguing element of this story, yet The Founder avoids becoming the unforgiving character study it so should’ve been – or at least it takes far too long to establish. Rather than use the protagonist’s flaws as the overriding plot device, it gets lost in the making of this restaurant franchise, which follows all the generic beats of the biopic genre.
The film also has unnatural dialogue, and you always know it’s been written with the benefit of hindsight, with much superlatives and rhetoric about the McDonald’s brand, things you would only truly say if you had witnessed it’s growth across the past few decades. But while the negatives from within the company exist, as we witness the lies and deceit and the way the original owners, and innovators of this new way of eating out, were manipulated and exploited, the one thing that remains on your mind upon leaving the cinema after watching this film, is just how much you wanna eat McDonald’s. This might just be the best bit of promotion the brand could’ve got this year, cos damn those burgers look good.