Written by: PBF
This movie is shocking! Yes, the fairly intriguing premise and lackluster delivery is shocking to say the least.
Feed introduces us to Phillip Jackson, an Australian detective as he is on a case in Hamburg. We watch as he discovers a man feeding another man his own penis. We then watch as he and his partner Nigel, move on to another project. They comb the internet in a sloppily paced and sort of confusing 10 minutes or so looking for a cyber crime worth mouthing off to the Captain and putting their badges on the line for. They find a site that has a live web cam of a man feeding a 600 lb woman. Phillip (luckily for the audience) explains to Nigel how this fetish works, and what feeders and gainers are. As Phillip explores and tries to gain access to the site’s restricted areas, he figures out what is really going on. This man is force feeding woman and taking bets on how long they will live and how much weight they will gain. Hooray, a cyber crime to solve! In some pretty questionable tracing techniques (not morally questionable; plausible questionable), he discovers where the site is run, Ohio. Instead of being sent there to investigate, his sanity is questioned by his boss (after he is found crying in the bathroom) and he is put on a suspension. Does this stop him from going to America? Well that would make for a boring film, wouldn’t it? Don’t worry, he goes. Yes he still manages to make a boring film out of it.
If I had to pick the thing that bothered me the most about this film, it would be the seemingly over abundance of opportunities to disgust and sicken me, that failed to do anything of the sort. Well, the penis eating thing did, and that was at the beginning of the film so I assumed there would be much more horrible things to follow. Not that the concept isn’t horrible, it is. It’s also not a common plot for a film, which peaked my interest. In fact, so shock-less was it, that it wasn’t even until the film had ended that I realized I sort of witnessed cannibalism. I would rather have had that aspect played up a bit, and the pointless sex scenes between Phillip and his whore girlfriend toned down some. I realize that this was done to give us some idea of Phillip’s own sexual behavior, but it had absolutely no relevance to the rest of the film. Yes there is a morbidly obese woman eating and puking. Yes there is a man masturbating while smearing her with food. Yes, these ideas are quite disturbing, but the execution was not. To be honest with you, I am not sure where it failed. It certainly wasn’t the performance of Alex O’Loughlin, as Michael, the feeder. He was quite good. I definitely believed his motives and psychosis as we learned about his childhood. Perhaps it was the abysmal dialogue and acting by everyone else. It was rather distracting. Maybe so distracting that it was more outrageous than funnel feeding a fat woman. Maybe because Phillip was the dumbest law enforcement agent I have ever met, aside from Proctor, of Police Academy “fame.” That too, was quite a distraction. Whatever it was, it’s a shame, as this film really could have been quite disturbingly good, but instead, pretty much failed. Another thing that bothered the shit out of me were the awful covers of songs like, “Tainted Love,” “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” and “Lips Like Sugar,” cleverly inserted in the appropriate spots.
Now I am not suggesting that the only reason why this is a bad film is because it did not disgust me. That is one reason, but not the only. It isn’t really a positive however, that the film had the perfect recipe to do so, and yet did not. Once again, a film that may have been too ambitious for its budget. Perhaps if it had been given a director that didn’t have the least popular Highlander installment on his resume, he or she would have been given sufficient money to hire more than one decent actor (and obviously, it would have been more competently directed). Perhaps a re-imagining is in order.
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