Slipshod portrait of a 'Killer at Large'

Killer at Large: Why Obesity Is America's Greatest Threat (2008)
Major Genre: Documentary
Director: Steven Greenstreet
Rating: 1.5 of 5 stars

A look at the issues going along with the rising epidemic of American obesity.

The trend that my country started is, without a doubt, one of history's great tragedies.  In fact, I believe it is a little worse than the Holocaust because some obese people got that way deliberately.  Such a horrific tragedy deserves better documentation than what is given here.

Toward the beginning, an obese 12-year-old girl's family is interviewed, and as she gets liposuction, her parents say she has a "genetic" predisposition.  The parents are thinner than her, but the movie doesn't question this.

Some topics within this heinous trend - such as the reversal of the price structure of food, and the cheerleading for junk food on children's television - get plenty of mention, but others, like the evolution of obesity and the trend around the world, get discussed in literally one or two sentences.

Perhaps worst of all, Killer at Large is defective to the increasing demand for bad news in the media.  Interviewees say things rather bluntly, for example "Being fat has become a part of American life."  It's been some time since I saw it, and I don't remember any positive information.

As was mentioned, some significantly overweight persons are such because they just don't care.  The odds between voluntary and involuntary obesity run about one to one, but this movie doesn't talk about the involuntarily fat folk.  It was listed (by me) in the "Don'ts" of handling sad endings to movies.  Killer at Large presents disparaging statistics about body count and failure to reform, and no alleviation.

I haven't yet seen The Weight of the Nation, an HBO miniseries with a similar concept, and I might not if it, too, is this grim.  At least Greenstreet's next film, 8: The Mormon Proposition, was much better (not to mention more widely-seen).

In 1994, Entertainment Weekly published a book about the top 100 movies by genre; their documentary selection probably reflects the quality of documentaries at the time (read: lower).  Consign this one to the same league as those.