Well, I have to say that I learned something new from this movie. Although I was aware of the fact that there are guys out there who like big women, I did not know that there is an underground fetish called feederism that is rapidly growing in popularity. The fetish involves a "feeder" and a "gainer" where the former feeds the latter copious amounts of food in an effort to have the gainer become larger and larger. In the process, both parties derive sexual pleasure and the relationship usually results in the feeder becoming dominant over the gainer. This bizarre practice is the focus of this film and although it is a hell of a concept for a movie, I have to say that it was wasted.

Patrick Thompson stars as a cop named Phillip who appears to be an expert on fetishes and how they exist on the internet. Near the beginning of the film, we see Phillip bust a man who is in the process of eating another man in an act of cannibalism. (This was clearly inspired by a case in Germany in 2002 that had a computer worker post on the internet for someone willing to be slaughtered to which another man replied and they carried out the act.) After Phillip witnesses this, he stumbles onto a website that promotes feederism and, upon further investigation, discovers that users of the site can bet on how long it will take for the gainer to die from being fed to death. Throughout the film, Phillip is on a search for the person who runs the website (Alex O'Laughlin) and his latest victim (Gabby Millgate) and will risk everything including his job and his sexy girlfriend (Rose Ashton) to find them.

This was a strange film in that I saw it a number of days ago and I can't stop thinking about it. What makes this weird is that the film itself was somewhat of a chore to sit through as the plot was bouncing all over the place, as was the camera. To make matters worse, the editor seemed to have the shakes when he was cutting and the end result was quite muddled and confusing. Add in a score that consisted mainly of someone tinkering the same three notes on a piano and you have a DVD that really began to grate on my nerves. The story itself was intriguing but the characters were poorly written and what we ended up with was an unlikable cop, a cheesy villain, and a terribly annoying victim who whined, acted sucky, and ate throughout the entire film. By the time the seemingly endless climax was over, you just wished that the 600-pound gainer would sit on the two main characters and be done with it.

As far as shock value goes, this movie certainly pulled no punches. From the opening scene where Millgate was gorging on cheeseburgers while the naked O'Loughlin was masturbating, I knew that I was in for an experience that would keep a knot in my stomach for the running time. Although it was pretty nasty watching Millgate gobble down food throughout the film with her humongous naked breasts and rolls of fat hanging all over the place, I was somewhat desensitized by the end of the film. The biggest impact the fat suit had on me was in a scene where Phillip, the cop, is having sex with his cute girlfriend and it's intercut with O'Loughlin rubbing what looked like chili and whipped cream all over Millgate's fat folds. Thank God I wasn't eating in that scene or I may have lost it.

I found this to be an interesting choice for director Brett Leonard. He hasn't had a big movie since the mid-90's with Virtuosity and The Lawnmower Man but with a movie like Feed now on his resume, it is unlikely that you will see him hit the big time again. I don't know if this was a defiant move on his part or if he just wasn't thinking straight since the Siegfried and Roy IMAX codpiece extravaganza he directed back in 1999. From a directorial standpoint, Leonard seems unable to tell a cohesive story or to get decent performances from his actors.

With subject matter like this, I figured it would be pretty hard to make it boring but I was looking at the clock after 30 minutes and the rest of the film just dragged on and on. I think had Leonard been less concerned with trying to employ the trendy MTV style of today's cinema and instead opted for a slower, more serious take on the subject, he could have come up with something really disturbing rather than a wasted opportunity. The subject of this film was what stood out, not the execution, and I probably would have had a more horrific experience watching a documentary on the subject. Nevertheless, now that I know about the strange fetish of feederism, I will never look at large women eating cheeseburgers the same way again. (Josh Pasnak, 12/3/06)

Directed By: Brett Leonard.
Written By: Kieran Galvin.

Starring: Alex O'Loughlin, Patrick Thompson, Gabby Millgate, Rose Ashton.