Greetings again from the darkness. I've said it many times - my expectations for documentaries are quite high. Either pick a side (ala Michael Moore) or tell the whole story. Anything less is a let down. That holds true even if your subject is a colorful curmudgeon with what might be an interesting back story.

You are probably familiar with the Burt's Bees brand of personal care items. And you have probably noticed the bearded guy logo. Yes, that's the real Burt and director Jody Shapiro introduces us. Admittedly, I got caught up in the Burt show ... watching him bounce between his life of seclusion and minimalism in Maine and the near-rock star status he enjoys on a PR tour of Taiwan. It wasn't until afterwards that the holes and unanswered questions started piling up.

The Burt Shavitz story traces his initial drop out from a promising photojournalism career in New York to selling jugs of honey from his truck on the side of the road. A chance meeting and initial attraction to single mom Roxanne Quimby brought ambition to Burt's quiet life and the next thing he knew, he was spending his days behind a desk helping run a company.

Burt and Roxanne had a massive fallout after the company relocated to North Carolina and the movie only hints at the real reason. It also leaves open-ended the question of whether Roxanne shrewdly maneuvered the company away from Burt, and then later sold it for almost $1 billion to the Clorox company.

It's pretty obvious Roxanne refused to participate and instead sent her son to answer questions. Because of this, the guts of the story are never determined. Instead, we follow Burt around as he fulfills his requirements to the company that he no longer owns. We don't get any details on his arrangement, who pays for his personal assistant, or what Burt thinks about the business side. Instead he ruminates about the importance of land, and how he lives a life without hot water or hardly any other of life's modern conveniences. Well, except for when he is staying in 4 star hotels while touring for the company. These contradictions are fascinating, but of course, go unexplored.

Burt doesn't appear to be a very complex man, and it's easy to accept his words at face value. He is almost 80 years old and seems to be quite satisfied hanging out with his dog ... but he also gets a kick out of the recognition and applause from his promotional tours. With all of the unanswered questions, this would have been better served as an hour long "Biography".

Jody Shapiro's documentary Burt's Buzz opens on an explosive note; we see Burt Shavitz, the creator of the natural, personal care product company Burt's Bees, walk through a Taiwan airport and be created with overwhelming love by the community. Burt, dressed like a hippie beekeeper (mainly because he is), boasting long gray hair and a long gray beard, a sunhat, and glasses, humbly waltzes through the crowd, taking pictures and occasionally seeming uncomfortable around the noise. As someone who had little knowledge on Burt's Bees as a company (and, even after watching this video, still admittedly does), I was stunned to see such overwhelming love and recognition for a man who founded a personal beauty company that has presumably found most of its success in America.

We cut to Burt back in his small Maine home, living off the desolate land with his friend Trevor Folson, in what Trevor refers to as "Burt's horde of peculiarity." We learn that excessive publicity, social media, and adoration from fans leaves him sickened and wanting to reach for his trusty shotgun. He states that a good day is when "no one shows up and you don't have to go anywhere," as he sits outside in a lawn-chair in a plaid flannel, jeans, and his trademark, unkempt beard, looking like a cross between Matthew McConaughey and Gandolf. He is anti-war and embraces being a free-spirit; someone who humbly sits back and watches the world naturally behave without tampering with nature's ways. To call him eclectic is entirely shortchanging; he's other-worldly unique and original.

After a good forty-five minutes of Burt aimlessly reciting his own personal ideology of the world and nature, we finally get into talking about Burt's Bees as a company. At first, Burt doesn't seem the least bit interested in talking about what made him so successful or what his company means to him, almost as if he didn't want a company in the first place or forgot he ever owned one. Burt tells us how the love of his life, Roxanne Quimby, essentially helped build Burt's Bees into what it currently is, and then, when Burt decided the company was growing too and retracted in his involvement in hopes to stay true to his authentic roots, Roxanne took the company as her's and more-or-less swindled him out of a great deal of money. She took Burt's Cottage Industry creation, oversaw its maximum profit potential, and took a whole of the company, seeing Burt's life as nothing more than a cute story; not a real meaningful lifestyle that he held near and dear to his heart. "She used me as a pillar to her own success," Burt humbly reflects.

And yet, Burt doesn't seem to hold any malice towards Roxanne, despite having every reason in the world to do so. He seems content simply living his life as it is today; simple, within his means, and pleasantly unproblematic. Trevor mentions how the only things Burt really loves in the world are "his dog, his land, his fields, and his oatmeal in the morning," showing quite simply what kind of a person he is through and through.

Burt's Buzz is a nice, surface-exploration of a man that most of us probably recognize but couldn't name before seeing this film. The downside is that Shapiro really doesn't seem to have much of an idea what to do with such a unique subject. In addition, Burt is so soft-spoken, quiet, and humble that the documentary winds up being flabby in a sense that there's a lot of dead-weight here, and the glacial pacing doesn't help much for that either. Burt doesn't seem to have any interest in his company, nor this documentary, and those two apparent features make this documentary a tough sit, as the dedication of the subject's involvement comes into question quite frequently.

However, the documentary ends on a rather intriguing note, with Burt being interviewed on a Taiwanese TV network asking what Burt's ultimate life philosophy or ideology is. Burt simply states, to which another coworker affirms, that so many see life as the accumulation of a great dealing of things. Burt doesn't want to accumulate as much as he wants to sit back and observe the world around him. Unfortunately, in Burt's Buzz, such ideologies and concepts of the world prove more interesting to discuss than to actually watch unfold.

Directed by: Jody Shapiro.

I had high hopes, being that I'm a Mainer (who can relate to the quirky Mainer personality types) and a long-time user of Burt's Bees products. My aesthetic is similar—I like graphic design that is simple, yet slightly old-fashioned looking; I like products that are all-natural. But this documentary left me with more questions than I came in with (not knowing anything about the history of the company, I wanted to learn why they felt Burt warranted his own documentary). First, I think it suffered from the narrative thread—I wish it was told more linearly (start with early days of the company rather than hitting the audience with Burt's Taiwanese groupies in the first 2 minutes). Burt is quirky, but this doc doesn't give you enough—there is no coda, there is no real mention of the current company's owners (Clorox), there is no mention of why Roxanne declined to participate (or if they even asked her to), Burt's manservant (or "majordomo" as he is credited) who is he, who pays him and why is he there? There are themes I wish they explored deeper: how does Burt feel about his image being on all these products, products that no longer follow his original vision. What does the son really feel about the situation (he seems to be doing the most diplomatic of answers to all his questions). here are some heart-warming moments: Burt and his dog singing together over Skype, Burt telling Taiwanese investors "we need to separate our needs from our wants", but overall this doc needs more.