I remember being like five or six years old and going to visit my Nana, who would usually take my sister and I to Blockbuster to rent movies to watch. I remember picking out Mac and Me, because for whatever reason, the box art just… struck me.
I barely remembered anything about the movie except for the scene of Mac in the teddy bear suit dancing on the counter at McDonald’s. That’s the thing my brain latched onto; not Eric falling off a cliff, not Mac getting sucked into a vacuum, not Mac’s horrifying family, not Eric dying and coming back to life… I remember the McDonald’s dance party scene. Years later at a friend’s house, I would watch this film, not remembering a goddamn thing except Mac cutting a rug as McDonald’s employees watched on.
To this day, I wonder why that scene in particular stuck with me so hard.
Thanks for this. It was a good read. I’m not sure I buy all of it (“Yes, we were planning all along for it to be a huge cross-promotion with McDonald’s, but the name MAC was a complete coincidence!”), but it does make a great point about disability representation in the film.
Eric, the main human character, is disabled.
Eric’s disability is not portrayed as an undue hardship or a reason for pity.
Eric’s disability is not the focus of his character. It’s not his defining trait. It’s merely a fact of his life.
It’s not about him learning to have a better attitude about it or having to “overcome” it or how inspiring he is for having the strength to live a normal life.
The actor who played Eric is actually disabled, not an able-bodied kid they stuck in a wheelchair.
Even today, every single one of those things is incredibly rare in media.
We definitely need more of that in Hollywood. Notice even at the end when they brought him back from the dead, they didn’t make him walk again, I’m glad they didn’t.
All of this is completely true and to be commended for a cynical cash grab movie, but they still chucked him off that cliff and I feel evil for finding it as hilarious as I do.
Yes, exactly. I was worried about that, too. I’m glad they didn’t.
According to the article in the OP, it was not actually a tie-in with McDonald’s itself, but was supposed to be a promotion for the Ronald McDonald House charity (which was founded to provide care for families with hospitalized or disabled children).
Of course, the article also says that it’s a complete coincidence that the creature was named Mac, that they set the birthday party scene in McDonald’s purely because the director believed it was what every kid would love and relate to, that McDonald’s gave them license to use any of the company’s IP but asked that Ronald not appear on screen (which the director chose to ignore), and that they took pains to ensure that Mac wasn’t a copy of ET (and even sent a copy to Spielberg’s people for approval). So make of that what you will. It does note that McDonald’s did not fund the movie at all… but a supply company that exists entirely to sell ingredients to McDonald’s did.
Early on in the movie where Mac spreads everything around the house, as Eric goes outside you can see the living nightmare Teddy bear lying against the fence that Mac becomes later on in the film.
Here is the original (1988) trailer for Mac and Me. It’s pretty odd in that it gives away almost every good part of the movie, in fact you could almost skip the movie and just watch the trailer.
