Somewhere in here there's an important message that could become very powerful and resonant with a lot of people, more now than ever, but there's some trouble sussing out what that is. Is it about our consumerist nature? Is it about uncovering what our purpose in life is? Is it about hugs? I don't know!

There's a little bit too much self-importance at the center of the documentary for me to really want to wrap my arms around it in a big embrace. One guy literally reads a passage from his own book to us ON A BEACH. There's also a lot of minimalists on their iMacs, despite repetitive, negatively-framed scenes of people in Apple stores.

I really like the…

I'm a hugger.
-Joshua Fields Millburn

It's like listening to a crack addict tell you that you shouldn't have a beer with your supper because substance abuse leads to unhappiness.

Two former materialistic douchebags explain how unhappy they used to be and how happy they are now that they've gotten ride of all their stuff and started spreading the word about minimalism. Weirdly neither one of them seem to make a correlation between their unhappiness and that they were douchebags at the time. I also question if they're current happiness doesn't come from the fact that their getting attention through their book.

I can see how living a minimalism lifestyle could make some happy, but this documentary has very little…

Minimalism is a great thing, and something I've been slowly working on integrating into my day to day life for a few years now. And this documentary could have been more than okay for me, but unfortunately the thing that got me into minimalism in the first place is the thing that ruins this film for me - The Minimalists themselves.

There were so many topics and people that I would have loved to have heard more about - the ex-Wall Street broker, Leo Babauta and how he incorporates minimalism with 6 kids (his blog is great), how to deal with wanting to make a massive life change such as quitting your job for something more fulfilling (like The Minimalists…

This documentary felt incredibly privileged in it's lack of context. It felt like it was written specifically for upper middle class white people. I don't think providing some kind of economic/class analysis or racial context is too much to ask for, and this documentary barely even touches on these topics even though consumerism and class/race are inextricably linked.

The minimalism they are peddling is something that poor people have always embodied by necessity, and there is no mention of that. The documentary briefly touches on Buddhism for a moment as it skirts through meditation as one of the many (under-developed) tools of minimalism, but does nothing to dive into the culture that created Buddhism or any of the roots of…