According to “The Founder,” Ray Kroc — the man who made McDonald’s into the Godzilla of the restaurant world — was energetic, slick, fast-talking and willing to do whatever it took to close a deal.
In short, this is a honey of a role for Michael Keaton. Reborn as an actor with the success of “Birdman,” Keaton brings his whirligig energy and wolfish appetite to an all-beef, double-decker part. Watching him lay into the material is the main pleasure of watching “The Founder.”
The title is meant to be ambiguous: Ray Kroc wasn’t the founder of McDonald’s, even if everyone thought he was. But he might have been the founder of a certain kind of mid-20th-century hucksterism that elevated colorful hustlers to profitable positions far above the people who actually do the work of their companies.
Robert D. Siegel’s screenplay introduces Kroc as a middle-aged salesman who’s never grabbed hold of the brass ring he desperately seeks. In the mid-1950s, Kroc stumbles across the super-efficient burger joint run by the McDonald brothers in San Bernardino, California, and has an epiphany.
What if you could put this tidy operation in every town across America? And have every meal be exactly the same?
The movie is even-handed in showing how Kroc’s plan was both a brilliant marketing scheme and a sell-out of the McDonald brothers’ concerns for quality and integrity.
If Keaton’s Kroc is the film’s driving engine, the forthright turns by Nick Offerman and John Carrroll Lynch as Dick and Mac McDonald give the picture its soul. They’re the gee-whiz heroes of a Frank Capra picture, but they get overwhelmed by the shark from “Jaws.”
The cast includes Laura Dern as Kroc’s concerned wife and Linda Cardellini and Patrick Wilson as a business couple whose trajectory collides with the burger man.
The film gallops along and tells an interesting story, but director John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) can’t navigate the eventual shift from high-spirited Americana to betrayal and bitterness. The movie needs teeth to bite into its salty subject — maybe a director like Paul Thomas Anderson could do it justice.
Without the nerve to go all the way with this, “The Founder” is stuck on the surface. You could come out of this movie craving a Big Mac and fries, which doesn’t seem like the intended take-away.
“The Founder” (2 1/2 stars)
The tale of Ray Kroc (a honey of a role for Michael Keaton), the man who took the McDonald’s burger idea and turned it into the Godzilla of the restaurant world. It’s an interesting slice of Americana, and Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch are just right as the overwhelmed McDonald brothers, but the film doesn’t have the teeth to make a real impression.
Rating: PG-13, for subject matter
Showing: Alderwood Mall, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas, Cascade Mall
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