The Founder – 2016 – Amazing

Genre – Drama – True Story

Time: 1 Hour 55 minutes

Platform: Amazon Prime ; You Tube ? (See closing lines at end)

Director: John Lee Hancock

Cast: Michael Keaton. Nick Offerman. John Carroll Lynch

All of us have visited McDonalds at least once. We moan and groan at the ‘duh’ food but still cannot deny that it is truly a ‘fast food’ by Western standards; (no one thinks how your local idli-vada chap/ hotel also serves faster food but that is another story for some other day and time).

But how did “McD” get to what it is today from a two-man operation to the international giant that it is today? Who were the McDonald brothers who started this operation? What happened to them?  They must have earned millions out of the enterprise – right?

Plot: Ray Kroc, is a small-time salesman, stumbles upon the McDonald brothers burger shop and is surprised that his burger order is fulfilled within a couple of minutes. Intrigued, he starts asking the happy local customers, who insist that they rarely face any challenges and are very happy at the taste and the quick service.

From trying to sell them his milk shake mixer, he moves on to a bigger thing – branding the McDonalds burger it and marketing it as a chain. The brothers say they have tried it and been unsuccessful, as the quality cannot be controlled remotely for a restaurant hundreds of miles away. Kroc refuses to give up and tries various ways to get the idea to work. His relationship with his wife is going downhill and he is getting attracted to the wife of one of his franchisees. The Brothers are also not in a mood for further expansion and think they have made a mistake by working with Ray. Then Ray meets a man who gives him the solution to his problems; the rest is history.

How the brand then becomes an ‘all American success story” and soon a global brand forms the rest of the story. Ray Kroc becomes a multi-millionaire.

And the brothers? The McDonald Brothers?  What happened to them?

You must see for yourself as to what happened to them in this straight forward and factual story telling. Some of the incidents look too unbelievable; like the man overhearing Kroc’s conversation and providing the solution.

There is always something ‘off’ and ‘nasty’ about Michael Keaton’s performance as Ray Kroc, the man who ‘steals’ the brand and makes it his own. Even when he played Batman (with jack Nicholson as The Joker), there was something edgy on the screen and not a super hero. Here too we can’t make out whether he is THE good guy with good intentions or a nasty opportunist who capitalized on the brothers’ naivete and took them for a ride, to the extent they couldn’t use their own names in their own restaurant. Unbelievable but true and Keaton gives it a perfectly nasty edge as the opportunistic Ray Kroc.

No explosions, gunfights, killings, car chases but plain absorbing real-world drama behind one of the world’s most recognisable brands.

Who knows; someone might learn some lessons from this story 😊

As always with Hollywood, the production design to reflect the 1960s décor is nothing short of incredible. No doubt this is due to the enormous amount of documentation that is available on this topic, in the West.

The film has unfortunately moved out from Amazon Prime India. However here is something truly crazy. It says ‘dubbed Hindi version’ but when I checked the print, it was all in English. (There is another really dubbed Hindi version). So, get it before it too goes off You Tube

Real History – 4 out of 5

Script – 5 out of 5

Story – 5 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Production Design – 5 out of 5

Total – 4.8 out of 5