A Place at the Table (2012)

i must have seen a different film!!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Rosie is a little girl who lives with her mother and grandmother in rural Colorado, Rosie's mother works as a waitress, but her meager salary puts her above the limit required for qualifying for food stamps. Rosie's teacher sees a lot of Rosie in her. The teacher was so poor as a child that she had trouble concentrating on her work as a child. The teacher regularly goes to the food bank and delivers food to Rosie and other kids like her.In Jonestown Mississippi, Ree a mother of 4 has to drive 30 miles out of the way to get fresh fruit and vegetables, because Rhee lives in a "food desert", a place where fresh food and vegetables can't be delivered. Also in Jonestown an 8 year old girl named Tremonica is obese. How can kids living in poverty be obese?Barbie, a single mom with two kids living in Philadelphia has to figure out how to feed herself and two kids on the small government stipend. But some things are looking brighter. Barbie testifies with 40 other women in Philadelphia go to congress and win a slight increase in the food stamps program, and then Barbie gets a job, but does employment necessarily mean a better life for her and her children?A Place At The Table is a mostly effective documentary with a definite political point of view, but when it's not pouring out statistics and sounding like an ad for Jeff Bridges and his pet project on hunger, when it concentrates on poor people who have to live on food stamps, then the stories are compelling. It shows how difficult it is to actually feed children on a food stamps stipend .But it also shows how the poorest children become morbidly obese. The government actually subsidizes huge agrobusinesses, while the family farm is almost extinct. The Congress gets big campaign donations from the agrobusinesses and the agrobuissnesses make processed junk too cheaply, cheaper than fresh fruit and vegetables, and that's why poor kids are obese, because all their parents can afford is cheap, processed, junk food. The problem is that the lobbyists who give the biggest donations are the ones the politicians listen to, and poor people don't have a lobby. We have one party who has created a huge bureaucracy that the poor can't navigate, and another party who thinks government is the enemy and must be eliminated. They are both wrong, the bureaucracy must be streamlined, and the money must be sent to the people who need it the most, not the lobbyists with the biggest checkbooks. We actually took the problem of hunger seriously in the 1970's, starting with Nixon. Yes, I said Nixon. The film points out that surprising fact. Nixon and Carter did a lot to eliminate hunger in America, but we haven't taken the problem seriously since. No one should ever be hungry in America, the faith community has done heroic work in feeding the hungry, the film also stresses this point, but people of faith can't do it alone. They need help from a fully functional cohesive government to set standards, and fully fund programs so those standards are met. But the American government is so dysfunctional right now, it cannot solve the simplest problem.For reviews that leave you hungry for more, visit my blog, reviewswithatude.wordpress.com

Not earning enough money to be able to feed yourself and your family is NOT the issue, it's a lack of education and discipline. The fact that the most obese segment of our population is also the poorest and "hungriest" is SO frustrating. These people buy soda, sweets, fast food etc. but then claim they don't have enough money for vegetables...bull. It's just an excuse to say poor me and still indulge in gratifying yet unhealthy foods. I go to the store and buy 5 POUNDS of carrots for $5. 10 pounds of beans for $12. 5 pounds of brown rice for $3. This is a TREMENDOUS amount of nutritious food for only $20 that can feed me for a WEEK. This is obviously not ideal since we're still missing green leafy vegetables and fruit, but it's WAY WAY better than the junk food most of these people were eating. I say again, it's not a money issue, it's an education and discipline issue. Beans are packed with protein, rice gives you energy, and vegetables give your body the needed nutrition. Cookies, cakes, soda, chef boyardee, fast food etc. are all addiction foods that are very costly on your wallet and body, the solution is so stupidly simple that all the people complicating it should be ASHAMED! As a side note, the waitress in the first scene was complaining about how little her paycheck was every two weeks, shame on her for not telling the whole truth. You don't waitress for the paychecks, you do it for the cash tips, how many cash did you accumulate in two weeks? Didn't want to mention that one did ya? The same family also said they don't buy vegetables anymore because it's too costly, well then, STOP making cakes and pies and start buying carrots and celery if you really care. Otherwise, don't act like you can't afford it when the reality of the situation is you don't want to buy the healthy stuff because it doesn't taste as good.

"A Place at the Table" completely transformed my paradigm of America. When I hear the words "hunger" and "starvation," images of ravenous, malnourished, dying children in Africa instantly pop into my head. However, this poignant, simple, and impacting documentary showed me that "hunger" could be sitting right next to me in school. This 84-minute documentary details with moving austerity how and why even in America, the world's richest nation, children are going hungry.Featuring Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges, the founder of the End Hunger Network, "A Place at the Table" follows people, all from different towns and cultural backgrounds, who are food insecure. In other words, they have no idea when and how their next meal is going to come in. 50 million people in America are food insecure. This not only stunts physical development but mental development as well. Take Rosie, a fifth-grader growing up in rural Colorado. She tries to focus in school, but hunger pains cause her to zone out or to imagine her friends and teachers as fruits. Her dream is that one day, her kids can do what they want to do and what they need to do without going hungry. Another instance is Barbie, a single working mother with two kids. Her toddler son mumbles and has an attention-deficit symptom. This is because of the lack of food for Barbie and her family when he was born. The lasting effects of hunger in a child's first years impact a child much more deeply in the brain than the body. It's an emotional moment to see Barbie break down into tears in front of her kids, exhausted of the intense struggle to make ends meet.The documentary grippingly touches on so many different issues. It clears up myths and breaks stereotypes. A false paradigm that America blindly looks through is that hunger doesn't exist because children struggle with obesity. However, obesity, hunger, and being food insecure go hand-in-hand. Because of a low income, families on a very limited budget shop for the cheapest foods in store – chips, cookies, and ice cream. Produce is simply too expensive. Hunger exists not because there is not enough food. Hunger exists because it isn't a big enough issue on the political agenda. The documentary is packed with real statistics and visuals that are not just standard, cold numbers, but the toll of hunger is shown in the glimpses of families scrambling to break the cycle of poverty. This film calls out to audiences to end hunger in America by alerting politicians and the government. "It's just appalling," says actor Jeff Bridges. "You know if another country was doing this to our kids we would be at war. It's just insane and it doesn't have to be that way.""A Place at the Table" will truly open your eyes to the harsh realities of a food insecure nation. I am determined to push forward in this fight of ending hunger, and I believe our nation can rise out of the pit we've buried ourselves in. America's youth has a passion and an unbendable will to fight for what's right, and if pointed in the right direction, I believe that the American Dream of prosperity can come true. The only thing standing between now and the extinction of hunger is the hurdle of ignorance, clouding youths' and the government's minds. Share this documentary with friends and family – I recommend this for all ages. If we act with urgency and boldness, perhaps one day, everyone will have a place at the table. Reviewed by Cassandra Hsiao, KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 14. For more reviews, go to kidsfirst.org.

My wife and I downloaded this from iTunes today and were so impacted by the film. The film follows several people of different races and backgrounds, urban to the South to the mountains of Colorado. All are working (as the film goes on) but none make enough to buy enough food to be sure it will last all month. Many of them do not even qualify for food stamps/bridge cards. The fact that the poor and hungry have little lobbying impact in Washington compared to the gigantic agribusiness flood of money is clearly part of the reason we see this dilemma where the richest large nation fails miserably in keeping its working poor feed. Please see this film if you care about this issue. Many of your opinions may turn out to be misconceptions founded on stereotypes.As for Marc Newman's criticism, the idea that charity organizations like food kitchens and food banks sponsored by churches (yes, those clips of devoted pastors and churches were kept in and were very impressive) could solve this problem is ludicrous. We are talking about 50 million people and 13 million children. As my pastor (who is VERY conservative) says... the problem is overwhelming. There is no way volunteer and charitable organizations can meet the demand, and for Mr. Newman to suggest it could makes me wonder if he has ever worked at trying to get food to the poor. Many of us have done so and we know how huge this problem is... far beyond the resources of the faith community. As was noted in this documentary, the government once before almost totally eliminated hunger (in the late 70's) when both Democrats and Republicans (including Ronald Reagan) made it a priority. The government could do it again if it desired.