The Founder is the story of an empire built through ingenuity, cunning and old-fashioned douchebaggery. Michael Keaton stars as Ray Kroc, a struggling milkshake machine salesman that stumbles upon a small roadside burger joint called McDonald’s and envisions the future of the restaurant business. After convincing the McDonald brothers to allow him to franchise the place, Kroc proceeds to build one of the most successful corporations of all time.
Depending on your philosophical and political leanings, this story could be either cautionary or inspirational. Kroc’s increasingly shady expansion tactics contrast with the McDonald brothers’ simplistic goal of running a single successful restaurant and it all comes down to the old story of Main Street vs. Wall Street, or quality vs. quantity, or whatever your cliché of choice may be. Although that tale has been told a million times in a million different forms, The Founder is worth watching for the excellent lead performance alone.
Michael Keaton’s performance is the cornerstone of this film and he is one of my all-time favorite actors. He has a unique quirkiness to him that allows him to somehow be awkward and charismatic at the same time. I could watch the dude eat breakfast and be more entertained than I am by half of the movies that I see nowadays. He elevates Kroc beyond the simple villainy that could have easily resulted from a lesser actor, making the man understandable (if not even sympathetic) when he is screwing over his former partners. What he does is morally questionable, certainly, but one can nearly see the gears turning in Keaton’s head as he weighs profits and ideals in his mind. Profit always wins, but Keaton’s Kroc isn’t necessarily a bad man. The audience can see the ethically-detached logic of his choices and, if they are honest with themselves, wonder if they would make the same choices if they were in his situation and had his vision.
In stark contrast, the McDonald brothers are flatly portrayed by John Carroll Lynch and an oddly mustache-less Nick Offerman. While Keaton provides a layered performance that allows his character to avoid broad categorization, these guys are victims from the moment they appear on screen. They are one-note characters, bastions of old-fashioned morality that constant spout lines about the need for quality and taking it slow. I’m not saying that those are bad things, but real people would be a bit more torn when presented with the opportunity to become millionaires (and even billionaires). Even when Kroc has done nothing wrong, they constantly want to slow his progress because it conflicts with their core values. Again, not saying that’s a bad thing. There is nobility in that. But they lack any sort of inner conflict and, consequently, come across as caricatures rather than real people. They are just the small-town yokels being taken by a fast-talking salesman and nothing more. Their stubbornness and naiveté only make Kroc’s frustration and eventual abandonment of them seem more understandable.
This will likely be a polarizing film. Many will think that it portrays Kroc too positively and will categorize him as a ruthless, back-stabbing symbol of capitalism run amok. Others will think that it portrays Kroc too negatively and will defend him as a visionary that not only created one of the most successful businesses of all time, but an entire industry that employs tens of thousands of people. I think that the film, more so thanks to Keaton’s performance than the quality of the writing, does a fine job of walking a line of moral neutrality and allows the audience to draw their own conclusions rather than beating them over the head with a message. Beyond that, the story of McDonald’s is interesting from historical and economic perspectives and its refreshing to see a take on the fast food industry that isn’t just a hipster jackass yelling at me about GMOs.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Founder#/media/File:The_Founder_poster.png
