Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy review – Mo Gilligan ruffles feathers in battle against ultra-processed foods

The ultra-likable comedian decides to go on a chicken shop diet for 28 days, but like a gen-Z Super Size Me uncovers some dark truths behind this billion-dollar industry ‘I think you’re going to die,” says a teenager bluntly to comedian Mo Gilligan when he tells her about his plan to eat only from chicken shops for one month. Spoiler: he lives. But after 84 fried chicken meals, Gilligan is heavier, unhealthier and starting to feel depressed. In this funny, slick and accessible Netflix documentary he takes on “Big Chicken”, the industrialised poultry farming industry. Flavouring doc-journalism with his brand of ultra-likable humour, he’s gen Z’s answer to Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock (who pulled a similar trick 20 years ago, eating nothing but McDonald’s for one month in his 2004 documentary Super Size Me). At the start of the film, there is no guilt in Gilligan’s pleasure walking into a chicken shop (“Bring on the wings!”). Growing up in a low-income household in London, a bucket o...

The King of Comedy at 40: Martin Scorsese’s painful ode to the wannabe

In the dark, dry comedy, Robert De Niro plays a scheming comedian whose mediocrity doesn’t dampen his ambition

There’s a sequence in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, where Jerry Langford, the host of a popular late-night talk show, slips out of his New York office and goes for a walk down the street. Everyone knows who he is, but how they interact with him varies. He’s charmed by a middle-aged taxi driver who greets him and tells him how much he enjoys the show. He’s happy to get an ovation from construction workers overhead. Then he’s stopped by a woman at a payphone who wants him to sign her magazine. He obliges. Then she wants him to say something to her nephew on the phone. He politely declines. As he walks away, she shouts after him: “You should only get cancer. I hope you get cancer.”

Nothing about this is out of the ordinary. It’s surely not the first time a fan has wished cancer on Jerry for not obliging a request, and he’s probably forgotten about this woman the moment he crosses the street. His chief expression is one of annoyance, because this is the price of being a celebrity and he’s going to be paying for it the rest of his life. People invite him into their homes every night on television and he becomes part of their lives, but it’s a one-sided relationship that he couldn’t reciprocate if he wanted to. As played by Jerry Lewis, who surely knows the feeling, he looks like a man who often regrets fame, but can’t do anything about it.

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