King Corn (Green Packaging)

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(4 stars) - Relevant, timely, engaging, and informative

For those who were shocked and amazed by the workings of the food industry in the documentary Food, Inc. There is another little known film that came out in 2006 that serves as a sort of compendium project. King Corn documents a year in the life of two Bostonians who lease an acre of land in Iowa to grow a crop of corn.

Ironically, the college chums, a couple of likeable fellows with an affinity for whiffle-ball and fast food, both had a great grandfather from the same county in Iowa. So once the two find a landowner to lease them the property and a farmer to help them plant their crop, they start to explore not only their familial roots, but the roots of the corn industry. As the corn grows, so does their search, bringing them to some truly eye-opening realizations about the US food industry.

Though a lot of the information has been touched on in films like Food, Inc. and Super Size Me as well as books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, King Corn delivers it from a different perspective. By telling the story from a would-be farmer's perspective, the filmmakers are just as amazed as we are when they learn firsthand some of the inner workings of the agricultural industry. From the realization that US farmers are paid primarily through government subsidies since they often actually lose money on their crops to the fact that the majority of corn grown in Iowa is so genetically altered that it is not suitable to be eaten, even for those who have heard this information before, the film delivers it in such a compelling way that it seems fresh and consistently alarming.

The filmmakers deliver an evenhanded expose of the corn industry that doesn't seem as scathing as so many documentaries of late have. Nevertheless, by the end, when they actually have to take their harvest to market, you can really feel their heartbreak as they sell their prize crop with no idea where it will be going or what it will be used for. Will it be one of the 20,000 acres of corn it takes just to sweeten the sodas consumed in Brooklyn, NY in one year? Will it be used to quickly fatten up cattle? Or will it be used in one of the thousands of other food products made primarily of corn?

The film points out that we now spend less of our income on food than any generation in history, and fewer of us are needed to produce that food. However, considering that we are sacrificing so much of the nutritional value to keep costs down in a society with an explosion of problems like obesity and obesity, we have to wonder if we shouldn't reconsider our food budget. As one interviewee says of the government agricultural subsidies, "We subsidize the Happy Meals, but we don't subsidize the healthy ones." And yet so many of the farmers in the film insisted that if the American people demanded healthy food, they would be glad to grow it, but the current schism of quickly grown, high yield, low nutrition agriculture is going to be hard to break from. Nevertheless, considering that the impetus for the film was the realization that for the first time in history, this generation's life expectancy is lower than the generation before, our diets need to become a higher priority.

(5 stars) - Informative Movie
I had to watch King Corn for an english class and I have to say I really enjoyed watching the movie. Usually with documentaries there is a complete one-sided view that typically bashes the other side. This one doesn't do that, instead it asks questions and seeks to find the answers. While I knew that corn syrup was in a good chunk of all the foods that are out there, I didn't realize it comes from mass produced corn that is inedible. Everything that they found while on their "down time" after planting 31,000 genetically modified seed in 18 minutes they traveled around the country to find out where the corn they grow ends up. This part of the movie was quite interesting but it seemed to point out this is a huge chunk of problem we have with obestity in this country, there are numerous other factors.

Overall, I would watch this movie again even if it wasn't required. Since I needed to take notes on the film, I had a friend (not in my class) watch it as well and they were equally impressed. At no part in the movie did it lag or become repetitive, it was intriguing and informative. This is a highly suggested movie.

(2 stars) - Wasn't horrible, but it's no Super Size Me
This documentary was some novel but not much.... It's often contrived and slow-moving. I get the subject matter is important but the piece could have been a little more entertaining.

(5 stars) - Must see film as much about health as it is food
This film is a must see for anyone interested not only in food
production and food policy in the United States, but also what ailes
(sp?) us as a nation. The US government, and the agricultural industry
has unfortunately created a system that is out of whack. While we spend
less than at any time on food, we are spending more and more on
health-care (the one point I wish the film had made more directly).
This film should be seen by all Americans. I saw another comment that
quiblbed with the particulars in the film. The film is not a doctoral
thesis, it is a piece of art trying to raise awareness. I also thought
the device of the two filmmakers staking out an acre of corn and
following it through the year as a spine to the story was quite
wonderful, as well as the animations that they did with a still camera.
As far as I know you can also get the film to screen in your community
from the film's website. I highly recommend it - would be great food
for thought.

(4 stars) - URBAN CORNBOYS; or, CORN-UCOPIA; or, FIELD OF DIABETES
The documentary KING CORN follows Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, young friends who live in Boston, to the cornfields of Iowa, where they learn about the state of farming - corn farming, to be exact - in the United States. KING CORN confirms what you've heard about high fructose corn syrup, one major result of the post-1970s corn glut, but includes information you may not have.

Almost as remarkable as KING CORN's take on the worrisome corn-dominated American diet are the film's hosts, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis. Because they are not journalists, Cheney and Ellis are not making KING CORN as a natural extension of gathering news the way Michael Moore does in documentaries such as ROGER AND ME and SICKO. Both Boston, Massachusetts, city dwellers, Cheney and Ellis are not even farmers. The entertaining personalities of these young men make KING CORN even easier to view as we watch them farm their own acre of land. KING CORN could get away with a simple voice-over narration as it outlines the facts about America's food crisis, but Cheney and Ellis make it that much more interesting without becoming a distraction. They even prove able skit players in the KING CORN D.V.D. extras.

Mention the name Earl Butz and KING CORN now competes with the late secretary of agriculture's famously ignorant remark about African Americans as the first thought to come to mind. KING CORN points to Butz's 1970s drive to make American corn abundantly cheap as the start of America's bad diet. Butz, whom KING CORN interviews prior to his 2008 death, still brags that the American corn-ucopia makes food inexpensive. Either he does not see or won't admit that corn's profusion changes it from food to just a raw material, the resulting high fructose corn syrup explosion contributing to record weight gain in America. What good is low-priced food that leads to diabetes and heart disease? In the long run, isn't it costing Americans more?

See KING CORN.

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