A purveyor of candy contraband becomes a black market hero in this blithe, lighthearted documentary.
Steve Glew, the subject of Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel’s documentary “The Pez Outlaw,” is an unapologetic weirdo with long hippie hair and a big, Santa Claus beard — a natural star in this post-“Tiger King” era of quirky nonfiction portraiture. Glew, in the words of his wife, Kathy Glew, “is a creative person whose mind wanders a lot,” a cagey but charismatic oddball obsessed with breakfast cereals, Tom Clancy novels and Pez candy dispensers, which he began collecting and selling in the 1980s. His clandestine efforts to smuggle rare European dispensers into the United States made Glew a kind of black market folk hero among serious Pez collectors — of whom there are apparently many — and also drew the ire of the former president of Pez Candy USA, Scott McWhinnie, known as the Pezident.
Glew is an amusing screen presence, and his story, while unquestionably trivial, has some of the absorbing, low-stakes whimsy of a nice magazine feature. The directors approach the material blithely and with humor, staging dramatic re-enactments of the anecdotes Glew and others recount in highly stylized, almost parodic form — the running of candy contraband is depicted like the climax of a breakneck espionage thriller, a toy convention is made to look like a speakeasy in a film noir, and so forth. Glew himself, importantly, is never the target of the joke: the movie has too much affection for its subject to ridicule his eccentricities, even gently, preferring to lionize him instead. An inevitable consequence of this chummy idolatry is that the playful tone begins to feel rather cloying. Like Pez, the film is charming and colorful — and perhaps too sweet.
The Pez Outlaw
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
