Burt’s Buzz (Review)

Review By Elizabeth Weitz

With the sick amount of Burt’s Bees products that line the bottoms of most of my bathroom drawers you would think that co-founder and “Face” of the company, Burt Shavitz, would be rolling around in a huge beehive made of moolah, but, like most things that happen in life, that is not the case.

Sure, Shavitz’s iconic grizzled visage might grace most every product of the Burt’s Bees line, but somewhere along the road to success the man got shafted…shafted hard, and while the point of this documentary isn’t so much an expose about that fateful day when Shavitz’s business partner, Roxanne Quimby, bought him out of his very own company in the early 90s (and then sold it to Clorox- of all places- for a staggering sum of money of just under a billion dollars in 2007), it also doesn’t have a whole lot to say about the man himself, other than to create a particular mythos of a simple dude who is just happy to live off the land and eschew commerce.

Which would be fine, except, well, that doesn’t seem to be the case either.

You see, for all the talk about how Shavitz is just a simple hippy who just so happens to enjoy hanging out with bees and living the simple life, there is also an underlining feeling of bitterness that permeates the entirety of film which is completely justified. But the tempered anger that runs underneath the surface of Shavitz about losing a company that he co-founded isn’t made so much a plot point as it is turned into a minor inconvenience.

Which seems to a little odd considering that the guy who was ousted from his very own company now gets to shill for it like a paid spokesman (Yep, Clorox understands that a buying public wants to know that there’s an actual dude name Burt roaming the world and they are not afraid to pay him for the privileged of making even more money off of him) .

Yes, that actually happened…and if you wanna see what a real fuck over looks like, try watching a 79 year-old man handing out lip gloss to Target customers with a pained smile on his face.

Which brings me to my greatest criticism of the film.

The story of Burt Shavitz is truly an interesting one, but the documentary does little in actually giving us a deeper picture of the man or the issues surrounding his company (and subsequent loss of it), which is a shame, for Shavitz is one of those crazy, inventive, all-American characters who deserves the kind of creative narrative that a great documentary can give him.

Unfortunately, this isn’t it…but I’m guessing that’s the least of his problems.