An epic crime drama chronicling the rise and fall of a small time fry cook who rises to become the King of Burgers in a cutthroat fast food industry.
Everyone loves a good parody film that will just make you laugh once in a while, but Reuben Guberek takes us to another level with Foodfellas in unleashing a magical blend between two extreme worlds. The brilliance comes not only from the idea and the storyline itself, but mainly from the personification of lovable characters put into a greased up gangster world.
I mean, Ronald McDonald is like someone mashed up Jack Nicholson and Robert DeNiro and threw in a little spice of Heath Ledger. Brilliant.
Foodfellas was a team effort, completed as our undergrad senior thesis film at USC. To us, it was always more than just a parody of the epic crime genre Martin Scorsese pioneered so well. I think the phrase “it’s funny because it’s true” applies to this film in a sort of twisted way. Behind the comedy, the real “true story” is that there may very well be a world of violence behind America’s most popular fast food empires.
The rest is just fed by a remarkable array of puns and play on words and hitting the parody aspect right on while avoiding the tackiness that often comes attached to it. Great work of love, I am now hungry!