GazerRise Fantastic!

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

jdavin-1 This movie is painful to watch. The two activists come across as petulant children railing against practically every injustice in the world that they can think of.The documentary fails to present a coherent argument. It's all over the map - in one minute they're complaining that killing chickens by beheading them isn't the most humane way to do it (but is that really true? they don't cover any alternatives) and in the next moment they're complaining that McDonald's is responsible for rain forest destruction (but they don't even say why! I guess because McDonald's uses paper? But so does every other company on earth).This film could have been better with more facts about the UK legal angle and much less anti-corporation propaganda.In trying to figure out what the concluding message of the film was, all I could come up with is that it showed what a waste of resources their case was and how pointless this all was. All it really did was feed millions of dollars to lawyers. But the fact that tying up the courts like this only benefits the lawyers is not really an interesting fact or anything new.

film_riot Mr. Everyman and Mrs. Everymen, Dave Morris and Helen Steel distributed flyers, on which they criticized the fast food company McDonald's for their business practices, concerning environment, health risks and advertising amongst others. Because of UK law McDonald's could sue them and ultimately also win the case. However, long term results of Steel's and Morris' engagement were that in the year 2004 the law was changed and McDonald's image suffered an enormous loss. What they've done was important, but Franny Armstrong's documentary "McLibel" shows that an interesting story alone doesn't make a good film. First, the look of the film is held very conventional, meaning that it just looks like your usual TV documentary. The direction is not very imaginative, given that there are mostly the interviews, where I was missing counterweight. The re-enacted scenes were pointless for me, I mean, what should they prove? Just enforcing the emphasis on the David vs. Goliath story, rather than giving an unemotional and for that much more impressive view on this case.

youaresquishy I would describe myself as an ultraliberal. I am certainly no fan of McDonald's. I never eat there, and I don't own any stock. The fact that a company like McDonald's exists makes me cringe.Honestly, I feel this documentary was poorly made, and that most reasonable people who are truly interested in the famous McLibel trial would be better off reading about the McLibel trial than wasting time viewing this film. I feel that many viewers of this film feel that society would be a better place if more people watch this film and as a result are giving this unjustifiably good reviews. In truth, this is a really bad documentary. Even though it is less than 90 minutes long, it is extremely boring and frustratingly uninformative.I feel the McLibel case made the McDonald's Corporation look pretty silly. I really wanted an informative documentary that was going to present the facts surrounding the trial and the events leading up to the trial, possibly make me laugh, and explain what exactly it is about British law that made this sort of lawsuit seem viable to the McDonald's lawyers. Instead, I was presented, for the most part, with an uninformed and naive, one-sided, boring rant against the McDonald's Corporation for its business practices, primarily from the point of view two unlikeable, self-righteous, and naive characters.My first main complaint is that the title is a bit misleading. This is more a polemic against the McDonald's Corporation and its business practices than it is a documentary about the McLibel case per se. If the parts that weren't actually about the trial were cut out, I'd estimate this film would've been maybe about 30 minutes long. And there is hardly anything here about the pro-plaintiff British libel laws that made this kind of suit seem feasible for McDonald's to pursue in the first place (but only in the UK)--which really would have been the most interesting subject to talk about, in my view. It is as if the filmmaker wanted some excuse to make a film to educate us all about how bad McDonald's is and viewed the McLibel trial as a perfect excuse. As if any reasonable viewer doesn't already know that McDonald's food tends to be unhealthy, or that McDonald's workers get paid very low wages, or that millions of chickens are slaughtered to make Chicken McNuggets! Who doesn't know this? Well, if you didn't already know it, you will have definitely learned it by the time this film is done, because it will have been repeatedly beaten into your brain, unless, of course, you fall asleep first.My second main complaint is that the two principle characters, the defendants in the McLibel case, come off as self-righteous and just kind of silly, naive, twittering dingbats. For example, they and some other characters that talk in the film repeatedly express dismay at the notion that a multinational corporation such as McDonald's actually cares only about profits and not really about its workers or its consumers as people (except to the extent caring about us translates into profits of course). But these complaints are naive. You can't complain that vociferously about a multinational corporation wanting to maximize profits--their shareholders could sue them if they do anything less--the complaint needs to be directed more at the relevant law that allows and encourages this kind of corporate behavior, the people that support these laws, and, to some extent, at the consumers that support McDonald's and the workers that won't unionize and that accept such low wages. It's one thing to state the facts about McDonald's dispassionately and let the viewer decide for him- or herself whether to support McDonald's with his/her wallet, or to state the facts dispassionately and then go on to explain not only the situation the workers and consumers find themselves in relative to McDonald's, but also the situation that the McDonald's Corporation finds itself in relative to its stockholders, but it's another thing to one-sidedly skewer the McDonald's Corporation for the entire situation when the workers themselves, the consumers themselves, and the legal systems controlling the countries in which McDonald's operates and the people controlling those legal systems all share the blame. My third main complaint is that the film is not well-organized. It's just kind of all over the place, and presented in a random haphazard manner.My fourth and most important complaint is that the film is boring, thanks in no small part to the fact that the two main characters, the defendants in the McLibel case, are boring and unsympathetic characters.The best documentaries are those that either neutrally present facts about events, or present the best of all sides of whatever issue is being discussed from the points of views of well-informed and intelligent people, and that do so in an interesting manner. That does not in any way describe this documentary. I give it a 2 out of 10, because there are actually some parts of this film here and there that do actually talk a bit about the trial, but, really, I feel that's a pretty generous rating.If you want to be beaten over the head with an anti-McDonald's rant, see this film. If you want to learn about the McLibel trial, do yourself a favor and ignore the other reviewers and go read about it instead. It's a fascinating trial. This is a dumb film that tangentially touches on that fascinating trial to a small extent between rants about how evil McDonald's is.

Steven McLibel is the story of a single father and a part time bar worker, who were taken to court by McDonalds. Thus causing the longest libel trial in British history and the biggest PR disaster in corporate history. All because two people refused to say sorry.In the documentary Dave Morris comments that if there is a David vs. Goliath story then Goliath is the public, and David is the corporation.So if anybody is worrying that this documentary provides a one sided view of events, they should relax as McDonalds has a million dollar marketing campaign, whilst Dave and Helen had nothing, not even legal aid.And this is their story, of how they continued to fight against impossible odds, increasing court decisions against them and revelations that McDonalds had used private detectives to spy on them.It is appropriate that this story be told in classic Low Budget style, as Franny Armstorng armed with her Dad's camera embarked to tell their story not knowing that it to would take years of her life.The film contains re-enactments by Ken Loach and in this re-released version brings us up to present day as having finished the libel trial, Helen and Dave took on the British Government in the European Court of Human rights, challenging the governments libel laws. Laws that McDonalds had for years used against institutions like the BBC and the Guardian newspaper.Finally available on DVD McLibel is a great addition to a growing library of material on the Globalisation debate, achieved by two people who believed in what they were doing and one filmmaker's dedication to their story.