Collecting is more or less a disease.

It would have been very easy to make a simple talking head doc with this material, or a mix of interviews and very rudimentary recreations. You could also just create a portrait of the “Pez community,” and the people in that world are so eccentric it probably would be a totally satisfying film.

These filmmakers didn’t do that. They also didn’t so much make a movie about a particular scheme as they made a documentary about the inner life of this fanciful schemer. I really enjoyed the way they brought different genre tropes to their recreations, not only because they matched the whimsical tone of “The Pez Outlaw”’s memories, but also because Pez itself contains multitudes of characters and styles from all across the pop culture spectrum.

That doesn’t mean Pez isn’t gross, because it is. The dispensers? Sure. They’re fun. The candy itself? No. Absolutely not.