Minimalism can be an eye-opening message for anyone who hasn't been exposed to it, but for most, it's too little too late. Documentaries like Food Inc and An Inconvenient Truth were ahead of their time, coming out before the zenith of the information age. But minimalism has pervaded through blogs, books, Youtube, college lectures and TED already, and making this documentary at this time was a very safe choice.
It has a little bit of everything, some dialogue from semi-famous bloggers (and Sam Harris), a few anecdotes, pictures, data, some shots of Americans being iphone-addicted slobs. It has a lot of good one liners but doesn't particularly go into any one thing in depth. I don't think I walked away from it knowing anything I didn't already know.
Every now and then, I do need a little reminder to cut back on my excess and focus on quality rather than quantity, and this movie does that. It's useful for that.But this joins a long line of works with the cliché message of "avoid consumerism, find fulfilment in your life and live in the woods maybe".
