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‘Mr. Toilet’ Review: Getting a Handle on the World’s Toilet Shortage

This profile of Jack Sim, an activist for toilet construction, is a more serious documentary than its title suggests.

Jack Sim is the subject of “Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man.”Credit...Jim Orca/Kew Media Group
Mr. Toilet: The World's #2 Man
Directed by Lily Zepeda
Documentary
1h 27m

A film called “Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man” had better be prepared to tank at the box office. At minimum, concession sales at any theater showing Lily Zepeda’s documentary are bound to take a plunge.

Lame bathroom jokes get old quickly, but they make good icebreakers, which makes them useful for Jack Sim, the movie’s central figure, who travels the world broaching a taboo subject. As the founder of the World Toilet Organization, “the other” W.T.O., this Singaporean activist encourages communities to build toilets, a product that almost half the world lacks access to, Sim says in the movie. Impoverished pockets of India and China are particularly underserved, and the dangers go beyond unsanitariness and pollution. (Relieving themselves in open spaces, women in India are vulnerable to rape.) The film shows how expanding toilet usage requires not simply supplying financing, but also changing habits.

Zepeda’s irreverent documentary takes its cues from Sim’s lighthearted, at times irritating demeanor. His children seem to regard him with good-natured resignation. When we learn that he and his wife saw “Ghost” together, Zepeda supplies an animated sequence of them making a pottery toilet.

Still, this soft-edged character study lacks distance. Sim is portrayed as a quixotic figure unconcerned with practicalities, and the film would have benefited from more details on meetings and debate within Sim’s organization. (A falling out he has with the World Toilet Organization board appears to come out of the blue.) This is a puff piece of a documentary, eager to spread a message and go down easy.

Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man

Not rated. In English, Hindi, Mandarin and Telugu, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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