The Founder is an interesting look at the roots of McDonalds, though I think they went too far in demonizing Ray Kroc - they should have let the story speak for itself. Surely this is the story at the heart of most corporations - without Kroc the McDonalds brothers would have been running a super efficient single restaurant and this wouldn't be a story at all. Kroc brought the working franchise model to the table and worked hard to make it fly. (Even though it is downplayed, at least they showed the brothers as control freaks that prevented Kroc from making any money for his significant contribution, thus setting him on a mission to correct that with a killer business strategy.) Even though The Founder somewhat flounders by overselling its indictment of corporations and capitalism, the quality of the actors and their portrayal of real life characters makes it worth a watch. *B*

Michael Keaton is fantastic in this and without him or Lynch/Offerman I really don't know if this would have been able to sustain it's momentum or my interest for two hours.

This was a decent biopic but I was not sure it was meant to root for the protagonist. Keaton was much better here for me than in Birdman where as Lynch/Offerman should have been in awards conversation as well. The movie has pacing issues but it is good because of these three leads.

6/10

The Founder

Loved this. A story that I never knew about. It was basically a documentary with long stretches of drama/re-enactments. Keaton is brilliant. I am, however, not surprised it wasn't an awards season favourite. It is formulaic and could also be accused of being overly positive towards the McDonald's brand (not so much towards Kroc, though). But I don't care. McDonald's is such an impressive business story, and I enjoy eating McDonald's, so I really enjoyed seeing its conception. And the time warp 50s setting added warmth.

B+

It's a pretty formulaic film, but it is an interesting story. Made me crave a hamburger. Keaton is amazing here and definitely deserved an Oscar nom. It's also pretty funny in parts.

B

Well, I just loved this too, and very much share Algren's sentiment on it. Always a satisfied McDonald's customer, this is a very welcome look into the history of how it was started and it hits the right notes of biopic on the businessman that built it into the massive company it has become. Keaton is great, the right man for the role, and with Birdman, Spotlight and now The Founder he delivered just a great trio of performances from 14-16. The whole cast is good anyway, Hancock fits everyone and everything well together in a fascinating and entertaining story. What sets it apart from other films though is how it greatly captures the Americana feeling, with well shot environments and a pleasant score. It's surprising this story took such a while to be made into a film actually, but it was certainly worth the wait, and makes the film year of 2016 suddenly a whole lot better too.

A

I class it as a 2017 film.

It would make 2017 in that case a whole lot better too, 2017 would make more sense actually indeed...maybe I should edit that wiki entry.

These wiki dates are often so stupid and usually only because the film was show at some festival somewhere in an earlier year.