Steve Glew is a hoot.
He's the hero/rebel/menace at the center of "The Pez Outlaw," a sweet soul who spun an international web of intrigue in his search for rare Pez dispensers, the tiny candy delivery units which mean little to most people and a lot to a small community of collectors.
His drive to foil Big Pez — and to make himself a nice chunk of change in the process — makes for a highly quirky and thoroughly enjoyable documentary about big dreams, serving a niche and the perils of taking on The Man.
Glew, whose long white beard is part ZZ Top, part garden gnome, is the DeWitt, Michigan, man who lived a quiet life as a machinist before becoming obsessed with collecting cereal boxes.
Collectors, inherently, have a screw or two loose, as anyone who is a collector themselves will readily admit. Glew's obsession led to him sending in box tops to the cereal companies for free toys, which he later flipped at local toy shows.
When that hustle dried up he was introduced to the world of Pez collecting, and he soon found himself on trips to Eastern Europe, where he procured thousands of rare Pez dispensers, which he brought back to Michigan in giant duffel bags and sold to collectors.
This was in the '90s, pre-internet, when not everything in the world was a click or two on your smartphone away from arriving at your doorstep. Glew was risking his life, making border crossings with carloads of contraband in the middle of the night, and beating the big wigs at Pez, Inc. at their own game. Until Pez decided to fight back, that is.
Along with this year's "Jerry & Marge Go Large," which told the tale of the Michigan couple that beat the lottery, "The Pez Outlaw" is another small-town Michigan fable about the little guy going up against the system and finding a way to win.
Glew, along with directors Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel, know how silly their story is, and they indulge in the harmless fun of it all. Glew gets to play himself in reenactments of his exploits, and he appears in interviews talking about his experiences, along with his wife, his son and executives from Pez.
The bigwig at Pez, known as The Pezident, does not appear on camera, but others speak for him, and the myth of Glew is both built up and torn down at the same time. It's like listening to a guy telling his own tale at the bar, the details of which may or may not all be true, and might not hold up to the scrutiny of a traditional fact-check.
But it undoubtedly makes for a great story.
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'THE PEZ OUTLAW'
Grade: B+
No MPAA rating (language)
Running time: 1:25
How to watch: VOD
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