Excellent, a Must See

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This well-made documentary follows the last month of a year long visit of a New York independent film promoter and his family, who are showing free films on an island in Fiji to the local population.The documentary makers realised that there was far more comedy gold to be mined in following this dysfunctional family than following the progress and impact of the cinema, and so the focus is mainly on the family.The two spoilt and undisciplined kids, the frequently drunk Aussie landlord (who could have a reality series on his own), aggravating the local Christian mission by deliberately running the films halfway through mass... it amazes me that just one month of filming revealed such a catalogue of disasters.Some of the more memorable scenes:Dealing with the robbery of their house is just priceless, from the drunk landlord ("I had to compose myself!"), through the histrionics of the teenage girl as her parents ask who could have stolen the equipment, to the eventual return of the stolen property.The "Student Film Festival", featuring films from New York students, had me in stitches. The two students turn up with their films and after burning out their projector two times in a row, they start playing their movies to a bemused crowd. The student movies are truly awful (I'll be humming that tune from "Robot Boy" for a while), and the Fijians show their disapproval by walking out of the cinema. The stunned looks on the wannabe directors' faces is priceless.The clueless Janet, talking about how she was pulled to one side by a local mother and told about how wild her daughter is, made both me and my wife cringe in embarrassment.A scene where Georgia (the daughter) and John are shooting hoops and the camera shows the large love bites on her neck from her latest boyfriend, with no comment from her father.All in all a fascinating and memorable documentary - for all the wrong reasons. Watch it and prepare to cringe.

This movie is well made. It's amusing. It is an interesting portrait of families, cultures, and their various clashes as well has harmonies. It has a bit of an arc to it - enough to keep it going.But this is no "Stevie" and it's no "Hoop Dreams," either. The true drama and tension and weight simply isn't there. What we have here is a wealthy and successful family attempting a sort of experiment. Yeah, it's meaningful; yeah, there are lessons to be learned; yeah, you care what happens. But it's not moving or powerful.Then again, let it be a testament to Steve James and how he skilled he is that he can take a REALLY scant subject like this and spin it into a doco worth watching. Still, I'd prefer it if he returned to the more weighty subjects

I didn't know much about this film going in, but I am glad I saw it.The challenging environment that this family meets head on in this intriguing movie shows the ability of humans to adapt beautifully to stressful situations. And Steve James made a brilliant film that observes this process.I found Reel Paradise to be engrossing from start to finish. Every scene is a gem of reality that TV series can only hope to match. And the Pierson family, parents John and Janet and children Wyatt and Georgia, are fascinating individually and as a unit.Anthropologists will find the push and pull of the cultures to be of great interest. Candor abounds. The Piersons are to be applauded for letting Steve James peer so deeply into their lives. And I would only hope that every child in the country could be so tough and strong as Georgia and Wyatt.I haven't had a film "go by so fast" in quite a while.

This is a documentary about John Pierson, a film/TV producer that (to be honest) I had never heard of, who took his family (wife and two children) to Fiji in order to run the "most remote movie theater in the world." I have to admire the family for allowing the film crew to come and film them in their most private moments. They appear to be quite candid and "real" in the documentary, and not mugging for the camera at all. There are many funny moments in this film, and after it was over, I felt as if I knew this family. The young son is quite witty and stole the show, in my opinion. We were thrilled that the family came to the Sundance screening we attended, as it was in Salt Lake City instead of the main location of Park City, and a lot of filmmakers do not bother to attend shows in "the hinterlands." I recommend this one!