“Remembering Gene Wilder” is an affectionate and sentimental biographical tribute to the beloved star of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein.”

Director Ron Frank uses archival interviews, Gene Wilder reading from his autobiography, and interviews with producers, a couple of co-stars and Mel Brooks to recreate the Milwaukee native’s comical career, focusing on the key collaborations which became the films Wilder is rememembered for.

But it’s never much more than a surface gloss of the man’s life, a quick-and-dirty doc of the sort A& E perfected with its “Biography” series and Biography Channel — superficial, ignoring anything resembling an edge, never letting us know the guy, who died in 2016 at age 83.

There are glimpses of the benchmark moments in the acting career, a telling anecdote Wilder repeated about a doctor telling him to “never argue” with his sickly mother, but to make her laugh, a brief overview of his ill-fated marriage to Gilda Radner, and moving recollections of his final days via his widow, Karen Boyer.

We get a step-by-step genesis of “Young Frankenstein,” and a year-by-year account of how long it took Brooks to get “Springtime for Hitler,” aka “The Producers,” into production, with his wife’s Broadway co-star in “Mother Courage and Her Children” set to launch his screen career as co-star.

But the film career has few value judgments, celebrating the “comic” touch he brought to “Bonnie & Clyde,” his first film, his barely-controlled hysteria in “The Producers,” his brilliance in conceiving, co-scripting and starring with Mel Brooks in “Young Frankenstein.

There’s no academic or critic to speak with any authority to the work as an actor, and then later writer and director and star. Nepo baby TV host Ben Mankiewicz’s empty platitudes notwithstanding, somebody needs to talk about how badly-received and poorly-remembered almost all of his later films were, and why.

Richard Pryor’s daughter speaks knowingly of the on-camera — and on-camera-only — chemistry between her dad and Wilder in “Silver Streak,” “Stir Crazy” and the lamentable, late-life groaner “See No Evil, Hear No Evil.”

By the late ’70s, when Wilder was at his peak, he was already passe — making lumbering, clumsy and dated comedies like “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother,” “Haunted Honeymoon” and “Lady in Red,” all of which showcased Wilder’s weary style, and his limited bag of comic tricks.

Dwelling on a staggering disappointment like “The Frisco Kid,” which paired him awkwardly with Harrison Ford, is a huge mistake. Leaving out the romp “Start the Revolution Without Me” seems ill-advised. The enduringly funny films are few and far between.

Mercurial outbursts, a quiet side that could suggest “sinister,” good timing that eventually failed him, he was a complicated performer and more complicated, some would say damaged person. And little of that darkness or complexity is suggested here.

“Remembering Gene Wilder” isn’t bad. But it’s incomplete enough to call attention to its shallowness. It never overcomes that “Coming up next on ‘Biography'” superficiality.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Carol Kane, Alan Alda, Rain Pryor, Harry Connick, Jr., Ben Mankiewicz, Alan Zweibel and Karen Boyer

Credits: Directed by Ron Frank, scripted by Glenn KirschbaumA Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32