Smugness can be a trap. In Portland, it's so customary to receive accolades for our farm-friendly food culture that when a documentary film like Food Fight comes along, it's easy to assume that it can't tell us anything we don't already know. And that's true—subscribers to the Michael Pollan school of thought will have their expectations met almost immediately when he appears as one of the film's primary talking heads, and the film's history of American food industry and emphasis on supporting local agriculture is a succinct blaze through familiar territory.

What also might be irritating to local audiences (there's that smugness again) is the fact that—gasp!—Oregon gets nary a mention. Instead, the film follows the rise of California cuisine, with great emphasis on the contributions of Alice Waters and the famous Chez Pannise in Berkeley, and to a lesser extent, that of Spago in Los Angeles.

But despite the snub, and the reiteration of Portland's popular foodie values, now is actually a great time to see Food Fight: With increasing pressure to cut back on spending, any growing inclination that you might have to slink toward the temptation of cheap foods will be blasted out with Food Fight's insistent call to revolution.