
“The Founder” is on Netflix and you’ll still never look at McDonald’s the same way
Even if you’re there each week like me, or you never step in a McDonald’s restaurant, the presence of the golden arches still exists in your life if you call the United States your home. It’s that much of an institution.
Which is why “The Founder” a movie about the rise of McDonald’s, and the business wrangling of what turned it into an empire, deserves a watch. It also helps that it’s a very good film.
Michael Keaton stars as Ray Kroc, a traveling salesman, who meets two brothers who are revolutionizing fast food, and then does whatever he has to, in order to dominate the space. Keaton crushes it here. But the movie does so much well, that almost every dimension is enjoyable.
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You have John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman as the McDonald’s brothers who are unfortunate marks in Kroc’s plan. Laura Dern as Kroc’s wife, and Linda Cardellini and BJ Novak in scene stealing roles, also make the film even stronger.
The story is very well told, and the time period is captured beautifully in everything from the sets and the costumes. The real life operations of the surging restaurant concept also makes for fun watching outside for the actual drama (or robbery) that we watch unfold before us.
In the end, “The Founder” is a showcase for Keaton. His Kroc operates in a way that is unsettling but not too much different than what we see entrepreneurs trying to reverse engineer so many years later.
It’s disturbing, but boy is it just so dog gone entertaining. Even a few years later.
“The Founder”
Grade: 2016: A-
Grade: 2025: A-
What did you think of the film? Let me know in the comments.
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