The Founder--Movies I've Half Watched

This is yet another movie I half-watched because I was substitute teaching, and the teacher let this movie as the lesson plan.

I showed the first 55 minutes of this movie 3 times to 3 different classes.  I never saw the second half of this movie.

I had actually been familiar with this movie before.  I'd been vaguely interested in the history of McDonalds ever since I learned in high school that the franchise started out as just one hamburger restaurant opened by the McDonald Brothers.  

After this movie came out, I watched a few Youtube reviews of it--one by History Buffs, and one by The Cynical Historian.  So I was familiar with the general premise.

My thoughts after half-watching it: the story is vaguely interesting, but not compelling interesting.  (I suspect the second half of the movie, in which Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers come into more conflict, was probably more interesting than the first half, which is just setting up that conflict.  But I'd have to watch the entire movie before I said for certain.)

Furthermore, the movie moves at a very slow pace.  To be fair, the movie is intentionally designed to be a slow-burn, so you can't really fault it for doing what it sets out to do.  Although when I watched the first 55 minutes for the 2nd and 3rd time, I had the opportunity to observe that the editing is not very tight.  The camera lingers on the scene 2 or 3 seconds after the dialogue finishes.  The pacing of the movie could easily have been tightened up without really losing any of the story if someone had wanted to, but I guess the director didn't want to.

Between the story being only mildly interesting, and the film moving at a slow pace, it was a hard sell for the 8th grade students, and all 3 classes of 8th graders that I showed this movie to were visibly bored.  Still, it was mildly interesting.  I wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing one day.

Check out this movie on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3G3ZSx2        (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)