Hancock's bland biopic offers a sanitised and sympathetic take on the burger chain's beginnings and the man who turned it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 19, 2017

One of the many pleasures in John Lee Hancock's study of the man who made McDonald's an empire is its reminder that even the simplest ideas need to be invented.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 17, 2017

The man, played with dark relish by Michael Keaton, has the fabulous name of Ray Kroc (there is a suitably reptilian air to his grin as he says things such as: "Contracts are like hearts. They're made to be broken").

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 16, 2017

It is a surprisingly nuanced and barbed look at the American Dream and its flip side.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2017

[A] bright, absorbing biopic ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 16, 2017

The Founder could have been a Preston Sturges-style comedy/biopic - a high-mischief fairy tale with moral resonance. Instead it does little but polish Ray Kroc's boots.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 16, 2017

A special, worthwhile film that promises more confrontational Hollywood films in the future.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2017

The Founder ends up feeling extremely wishy-washy, unable to scrub the nastiness of Kroc's success but also incapable of confronting it.

| Feb 9, 2017

An actor most at home playing devilish, Keaton's got the last-reel Machiavellian shrug down cold. But neither he nor the filmmakers do much to illuminate the neural pistons fired from brain to bodily shrug.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 26, 2017

One of the must-see entertainments of the year.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 25, 2017

Its omissions and elisions are the result not of natural narrative contours but of open choices, gaping holes, psychological wounds that a filmmaker displays all the more via the elaborate efforts at concealment ...

| Jan 23, 2017

This film left me wanting. It seemed like a sure-fire story on the surface, which just proves how many things can go wrong from conception to execution. The Founder is as forgettable as a fast-food hamburger.

| Jan 22, 2017

Keaton is fascinating as Kroc, a bad guy who embodies the American Dream - a man who isn't necessarily the best or most talented but who's willing to step on anyone to get ahead.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 20, 2017

This is a rare film that looks at what it takes to create a globally dominant business, and what it costs as well.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 20, 2017

The Founder remains fascinating largely because Keaton is so good at guile and bile. Not once does he wink at the audience or overplay the obvious.

| Jan 20, 2017

John Lee Hancock serves up a biopic of McDonald's king Ray Kroc that is not unlike the restaurant's product: precisely prepared, brightly packaged, and uncomplicated in its appeal. Or at least, that's how it goes down much of the time.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2017

There's sit back, relax and watch Michael Keaton wreak havoc as Ray Kroc fun to be had with The Founder, but there's also a fascinating and deeply troubling character journey taking place that'll be tough to shake.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 20, 2017

As limp and cold as The Founder is as a movie, it contains one of the finest Keaton performances of his entire career, maybe the one he's been working his whole life toward.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 20, 2017

"The Founder" is a bit like McDonald's: it's satisfying, but it leaves you hungry for more.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 20, 2017

Belying its premise, The Founder is a terrific movie offering a surprising amount of fast food for thought.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 19, 2017