The Founder is a 2016 biographical drama about a salesman who turned two brothers’ innovative fast food eatery into the biggest restaurant business in the world.
THE STORY: In 1954, a milkshake machine salesman named Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is not having the best luck on the road pitching his wares to local drive-in restaurants. Who the heck wants a five milkshake maker when they are not selling with one? That is until he comes upon a small fry stand named McDonald’s, run by two brothers Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac (John Carroll Lynch), who have created a monumentally successful walk-up eatery where a burger, fries, and a Coke are served in an astonishing thirty seconds. What? They’ve built the first fast food hamburger joint. Impressed by their innovation and ingenuity, Kroc wants in and convinces them to franchise, eventually building one of the the most recognized company names in the world. It ain’t an easy sell.
Director: John Lee Hancock
Writer: Robert D. Siegel
Stars: Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Laura Dern
THE RUNDOWN: Who would have thunk a hamburger shop could make for so much cinema entertainment? The relationship between the three men is the real draw here as Kroc sees much larger potential but it’s Keaton who leaves the lasting impression, his dynamic performance the heart of the often troubling story of a man with a vision. Some intriguing behind the scenes look at the history of the famous fast food empire also makes for some real fun, even if surely a lot of the film glosses over or romanticizes some real life events. Well worth sitting through to at least get a deep appreciation of how it all started. Fries are up!
Easily it’s Michael Keaton that leads the charge in this colorful retelling of the hamburger mega-franchise, his commitment and characterization of the famous Ray Kroc the most memorable.
Sentimentally glazed, this is often very talky with loads of exposition and surely colors a bit of real history to be more dramatic than it was.
THAT MOMENT: Ray is on the road a lot, calling from seedy hotels to check in on his dwindling orders and to keep his supporting wife Ethel (Laura Dern) believing in his enterprising ideas. He listens to self-help and motivational LP records to keep himself chugging a long. However, his experience on the salesman’s battlefield is wearing him down. Customers aren’t interested in the long term, unable to see how investment can lead to profits. Not only that, the string of dying drive-in restaurants he services are a decaying fray of has-been trends kept barely alive by teens and hoodlums.
READ MORE: Full review of Micheal Keaton‘s The Founder
One day, he gets an usual order over the phone, one he thinks must be a mistake given how big it is, and hearing the activity behind the man in the background, decides to drive halfway across the country to see what it really happening. In San Bernardino, he pulls into a place called McDonald’s, where a long line of customers are already in queue, eagerly waiting on some McDonald’s food. He joins them and finds that it moves remarkably fast, and when he gets to the counter, is shocked when he gets his burger, fries, and Coke in a matter of seconds, gamely telling the clerk that he must have made a mistake. Nope.
Confused by the speed, and then the fact there are no trays, plates, forks, or knives, he sits on a bench outside and sees a veritable festival of food fans enjoying the same meal. What is going on? That’s when Mac rolls up on him, sweeping up the lot, his face all smiles, asking Ray if he likes the food. Kroc is hooked and introduces himself and soon enough, Mac invites the salesman to have a peek inside the system per se and see how it’s all done. This has him meeting Dick, the other brother, who is walking around like a drill instructor, keeping his team of workers running like a well-oiled (greased?) machine. It’s a jaw-dropping visual display of perfect hamburger-making efficiency. With two pickles each.
Desperate to know how they maintain such speeds and high quality, he invites the men to join them for dinner, and so, the three gather at a local restaurant and sit down to talk, where Ray hears the origins of McDonald’s, a thirty year overnight success story. It is a mesmerizing journey.
WHY IT MATTERS: One of my favorite parts of any movie like this is the flashback that answers a huge question, or the played-through demonstration of a plan, the look behind the curtain as it were. That it’s based on fact and serves as part of real history is just the icing on the cake … or the ketchup on the burger in this case.
At the restaurant, we sit with these three men basically alongside Kroc as expectant witness to the magic of the McDonald’s storytellers, who combine to tell their incredibly engaging odyssey from potential movie-makers to hamburger joint kings. Mac, played with terrific naivety by Lynch is almost too eager to spin the story (hints of future traps), deliciously unfolding their saga from their humble beginnings, the film using flashbacks to dot the landscape with all kinds of markers for us to follow, tracking their failures from driving trucks at the movie studio lot and their idea for a movie theater of their own … at the start of the Great Depression.
The thing to watch here is the epic fireside treatment of how the men thread their story, with Kroc nearly silent during the presentation, Mac so excited to finally regal an audience of one of their adventures, it’s like a mini-story book come to life, complete with pictures. What’s most fascinating of course is the evolution of the restaurant itself, beginning as a hot dog and orange juice place to what it finally becomes, with Dick being the more systematic and cutthroat of the two, seeing the weaknesses of their plans and making the more sacrificial decisions to break away from the conventions of the roadside eatery and redefine the entire business.
A flashback to a tennis court of all things becomes the pinnacle moment of the talk as they sketch out in chalk a life-sized floor plan of their new innovative kitchen idea and hire a team of young men to “staff” it, working through a number of iterations to finally get it to work. It’s remarkably compelling and even a little inspiring. How on earth can a pretend practiced model of cooking hamburgers on a tennis court be remotely fun to watch? Director John Lee Hancock makes it so. With a dash of salt.
The Founder is a highly-engaging watch, and while it’s expositional and certainly more symbolic than authentic, it serves up plenty of high calorie movie magic with a side of history. A scene that paints a picture of how it all began is the best thing going in it, where two brothers illustrate how they came to be the best reason to watch. It’s a great movie moment.