`FAST FOOD NATION' SERVES UP REVOLTING FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

`Fast Food Nation'' opens inside the brightly colored burger palace Mickey's (wink-wink) where disturbingly happy families and youth sports teams gather for good times.

The camera moves from one smiling face to the next before landing on Mickey's signature offering, a hamburger called The Big One. At this point, the sense of joy gives way to sinister music as the camera zooms in on the sizzling, greasy - dare we say alien? - meat. There's a reason it's only 99 cents, indeed.

From page to screen

Eric Schlosser's sprawling book ``Fast Food Nation'' was a fantastic piece of investigative and advocacy journalism - and a very unlikely candidate for a feature film. Director Richard Linklater and Schlosser have managed to make a movie out it, though, transferring the book's essential points to the screen in a way that amounts to a poisonous primer on the far-reaching effects of the fast-food industry.

The movie offers no answers or resolutions. Characters appear, drop out, usually never to be seen again. And while Linklater and Schlosser, who co-wrote the screenplay, are clearly aghast at the practices of fast-food companies and meat packers, they have not crafted an angry polemic. As one of the movie's many characters observes: ``It's not about good people vs. bad people. It's about the machine that has taken over the country.''

Oh ... shoot

For about two-thirds of the 106-minute movie, our journey into fast-food nation is seen through the eyes of Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear), the well-meaning Mickey's marketer who created The Big One. Mickey's profits are soaring, but there is troubling news - a lab report has found cow manure in Mickey's meat. Anderson's job is to go to Cody, Colo., check out Mickey's meat-packing supplier and get the straight story.

Other characters include illegal immigrants (Catalina Sandino Moreno and Wilmer Valderrama among them), who provide the meat-packing plant with cheap, silent laborers willing to work in extremely dangerous conditions. There's also teenage Amber (Ashley Johnson), a Mickey's counter worker feeling increasingly guilty about her job, and a spot-on cameo by Bruce Willis playing a Mickey's exec who pooh-poohs the cow manure in the meat, saying, ``Just cook it. That's all you need to do.''

The movie, unwieldy to begin with, completely loses its way after Kinnear exits, detouring in gassy gab from Linklater regular Ethan Hawke and a silly, late-night attempt to free the meat-packing plant's cows. It's also at this point that the film's earnestness gets the best of it. When one teen proclaims, ``Right now, I can't think of anything more patriotic than violating the Patriot Act,'' you wonder: What does this have to do with fast food? Doesn't Linklater have enough on his plate without taking yet another detour?

Disturbing on many levels

The film ends on the meat-packing plant's killing floor, where you see real cows killed and butchered. While that's probably going to put you off a post-movie burger run, what's really disturbing - at least, to this carnivore 7/8 is the way the business preys on the poor and crushes their souls, along with taking the occasional limb. But, again, there's a reason those burgers cost only 99 cents, isn't there?

Glenn Whipp, [phone].

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FAST FOOD NATION - Two and one half stars

(R: disturbing images, strong sexuality, drug use, language)

Starring: Greg Kinnear, Ashley Johnson, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Wilmer Valderrama.

Director: Richard Linklater.

Running time: 1 hr. 46 min.

Playing: In select theaters.

In a nutshell: Poisonous primer on fast-food industry is unwieldy, often too gabby and always thought-provoking.