(CNN) Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!" has languished for nearly two years, having been shelved after the director's disclosure of "past indiscretions." Yet the sequel to his 2004 breakthrough -- which is finally hitting theaters on a limited basis -- holds up in exploring the ways consumers delude themselves in their pursuit of "healthy fast food."

Spurlock, famously, ate only at McDonald's for a month to demonstrate the dangers of fast food in "Super Size Me," which became almost a horror movie for anyone who has spent a little too much time in the shadow of the golden arches.

The follow-up isn't as neatly packaged conceptually -- indeed, it's a bit of a scattered mess -- but still gets to the heart of Americans' issues with food, the obesity epidemic and how we allow ourselves to be wooed, or at least reassured, by words like "fresh" and "natural" and terms like "free range," even if, as presented here, they are revealed to possess relatively little true meaning.

Spurlock demonstrates his point in "Holy Chicken!" by opting to open his own fast-food restaurant, which means getting into the business of farming chickens.

As conceits go, it's a little bit too precious, detouring into issues that surround the mistreatment of those farmers by large corporate interests (or "Big Chicken," as they're called), which takes the film off on what feels like a tangent relative to its central point.

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