King Corn (Documentary Film)

King Corn (Documentary film)

Written by Aaron Woolf, Ian Cheney, Curtis Ellis and Jeffrey Miller 
4.5 stars
Reviewer: Nichole

What would you do if a scientist plucked a hair out of your head, ran some tests on it and revealed to you that you were comprised of 43% corn?  Well, first you wonder how that’s possible, and if you’re Ian and Curt, you set out on an year-long quest to understand it better.

First: rent an acre of farmland in Iowa (a town where they both coincidentally have family connections).  Second: grow corn in the usual way.  Third: follow it from seed to product to figure out what corn becomes.  And what do they learn?  Corn is everywhere!

There are a handful of ironically funny moments.  At one point in the film, they challenge themselves to find a product in a convenience store that does not have a corn derived product in it, and they cannot find a single thing.  Even beer posters hang on the windows advertising they are made with corn!  After being denied entrance into a high fructose corn syrup factory due to safety issues for the delicate process of creation (ahem!), they decide to make some of their own in one of the more humorous moments of the film, and though it’s sweet, it’s promptly spit out.  In another they actually try to eat their own Iowa corn and disgustedly throw it into the field.  It’s not intended for consumption like this.  It is grown entirely to be processed into other things.  This is what they have learned most corn is grown for.

These college students start out eagerly planting their corn, proud of what they are creating and participating in, and by the end of the film they are asking the farmer whose land they have rented why he would grow food he cannot eat, since most of the corn grown is at a financial loss (if not for governmental subsidies and the Farm Bill) and not for human consumption.  He laughs.  There is no real answer -- it’s just the direction this country is going.

While Ian and Curt don’t have a solution to the problem, as they have spent their entire research time eating foods chock full of corn byproducts, they find a way to make personal peace with what they learn, and it will make you smile.