Materialism, as this film tells it, starts with a reasonable survival instinct and ends with a society that measures worth in possessions. Narrated by Daphne Ellis, the film is assembled from stock footage, animation, and clips from popular films and documentaries, credited only at the end, tracing how the drive to acquire more got captured by marketing and mass production. It cites the disconnect between consumers and their food supply, the waste stream from goods that don't actually sustain anyone, and the moment after September 11 when Americans were told the patriotic response was to keep shopping. One statistic anchors the argument: the United States holds five percent of the world's population but consumes a quarter of its resources, a ratio the film asks what happens to if China and India consume at the same scale. It closes less on outrage than on specifics: buying from local farmers and craftspeople, cutting exposure to advertising, and keeping marketing away from schools.