What’s in a Name?
With perhaps the exception of Vlad The Impaler, has there ever been a name more befitting the person who bore it than Ray Kroc? If there is a takeaway from The Founder, John Lee Hancock’s new film about the “founder” of The McDonald’s Corporation, it is that the answer to Shakespeare’s question “what’s in a name” is: everything.
As Kroc explains at one point to a defeated Maurice McDonald: no one would ever eat a Kroc Burger.
No one, except for Maurice and his brother Richard of course. They get the deluxe meal.
We first meet middle-aged Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) as he hits bottom on yet another failed entrepreneurial scheme: selling mixers no one needs to a drive-in restaurant industry plagued with slow service, terrible food, shrinking profits, and chain-smoking teenagers.
From the very first scene we are experience discomfort watching Ray follow around a local drive-in manager, delivering a well-worn sales pitch. And the feeling never entirely goes away. Moments later, we discover a foundering marriage with a wife (Laura Dern) whose ambitions end at dining at “The Club,” where Ray must bear the condescension of her friends in the landed gentry.
When he discovers the McDonalds brothers and their restaurant concept, already booming at its single location in San Bernardino, CA, he rightfully recognizes that this is his last shot…and latches on like a Doberman’s jaw.
Persistence is all powerful, as his favorite self-help LP, played on a portable turn-table in a cheap motel room, reminds him night after night when he is on the road.
Now if this film were truly a cautionary tale, like say The Wolf of Wall Street, Ray’s discovery would kick off a giddy ascent during which we would enjoy the vicarious rush of success, perhaps wishing we, too, could be raking in millions, banging the secretary high on Quaaludes, and tossing dwarfs at a giant bull’s eye.
But The Founder never allows us the requisite level of comfort. Paired with a score heavy on the brooding lower octaves (who else but Carter Burwell?), Keaton’s manic delivery (reminiscent of his role in Birdman but with more predatory overtones and a well-tuned Midwestern accent) ensures that we never quite join in the fun.
Keeping us at a distance may be the point. For there is no corresponding downward spiral in Kroc’s life that can serve to punish him for his hubris, and leave the audience feeling chastened by proxy.
Indeed, Kroc comes out rather well for all his trouble, deception, and daring. His life is upgraded in every conceivable way.
Who then, might the caution be directed toward? Presumably the McDonald’s brothers. They begin as the happy creators of a family-friendly, hyper-efficient restaurant in San Bernardino, California. They wind up with no restaurant and checks for a million a-piece after taxes (today over $8,000,000 each).
But the lesson you take away from this film, if any, will depend mostly on your politics. The liberal will warn his children to beware capitalist wolves. The libertarian will find a gospel of how Ray Kroc brought an under-utilized asset to its full potential for the benefit of all.
It’s an interesting dichotomy, but not one Mr. Hancock is eager to explore. The nuances of this story go deeper than he is willing to dig. Too bad - the resulting indecision infects much of the picture. Even Burwell, deprived of a thesis from which to work, seems to hesitate, delivering a score that, although unmistakably in his style, falls far short of his work on Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, and True Grit. Sitting there in the theater, we half-hoped that this was merely the work of some imitator, not the real deal.
In the end, what saves The Founder is the bare story – a salesman well past his prime finally realized the American dream. He may have started out as a Kroc. By the end his name is The Founder.