Title: America The Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments

Opens: October 12, 2011 at New York’s Quad Cinema

Darryl Roberts, who wrote and directed this documentary, is the kind of guy you want to have a beer with, on a social level more a George Bush than a John Kerry, or a Chris Christie and not Michele Bachmann. He’s affable, down-to-earth, in short, a regular mensch. It’s easy to spot his ability to evoke wide responses from the population he interviews…make that, the folks he chats with. Nor does it hurt that he’s dealing with a subject that’s on all our minds almost as much as sex, and that’s food. Take a look at the magazines at your local kiosk, and you’ll find models and super-models on the covers with an implication that you, dear reader, can look like them. Many women, and now some men as well, seem to think that with enough crunches and presses and with the right diets, they can resemble Keira Knightley, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Ryan Gosling or George Clooney. That’s not going to happen, but tell that to the four out of five women who, according to the surveys shown by this doc, think for at least part of every day that they can be anything they want to me—not only rocket scientists and brain surgeons but physically hot hot hot.

Not that it’s wrong to be concerned about our bodies, but while “American the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments,” gives ample time in particular to one internist with a shock of white hair who thinks that virtually all diseases, mental or physical, arise from improper eating, Mr. Roberts is on the side of those who believe that the real problem is that many of us are on the road to anorexia nervosa or bulimia. The director is concerned about obesity, as he, weighing in at 272 pounds, is himself making efforts to knock off some of that avoirdupoir, aiming to lower his systolic blood pressure from 160 to the 116 that he actually achieves—even though he still doesn’t look like Twiggy.

Thankfully, “Beautiful” is not the sort of documentary that people stay away from in droves, the Sunday-morning-political -TV-talking-heads parade that the networks put on because there’s some FTC rule that each must have a percentage of public service broadcasting. We don’t find subjects sitting upright in chairs answering questions posed by the director. There is however, one such deadening interview with the Secretary of Health who like every successful politician diverts attention away from one embarrassing question.

Roberts intersperses his own quest to lose weight, including a visit to the Deepra Chokra Institute where he interviews the Great Man himself and tries a little meditation in addition to the yoga he engages in. But while The First Lady, as she’s referred to by both Roberts and some of his guests, is intent on fighting childhood obesity, some guests believe that she picked the wrong crusade given the tsunami of diet books and commercials that have some twenty percent to forty percent of women obsessed by diets at least during some part of each year.

Nonetheless, my own view is that since seventy-five percent of Americans will presumably be fat or obese by the year 2020, and that overweight is responsible for an epidemic of strokes, heart attacks, and diabetes, Roberts errs on the side of too much moderation, if you will. He leans in the direction of criticizing anorexia, which afflicts a relatively small percentage of people, giving the audience the feeling that expanding waistlines is not one of the greatest causes for concern in our country, and by extension in the rich countries of the industrialized world, as well.

Not Yet Rated. 100 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – B