A fascinating study in cross-cultural communication, as well as a deeply personal examination of family dynamics.

| Mar 1, 2007

What is learned? Not so much how cultures impinge on each other as how cinema shapes our lives.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 25, 2005

Highly watchable.

| Oct 25, 2005

The director's visit wasn't long enough to fully humanize this culture clash, but some of the movie's conclusions seem universal.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 25, 2005

Though these scenes may have energy, they're also mostly noise -- distractions from a collection of scenes without a driving force.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 25, 2005

Ultimately, it's the movies shown that make Reel Paradise so buoyant, for it speaks to the universality of a medium we often take for granted.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 22, 2005

Unfortunately, the Piersons can be so unpleasant that watching them misbehave in Taveuni becomes a chore.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 21, 2005

An amusingly damning portrait of a man trying to impose his will on a world that, really, has better things to do.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 21, 2005

I found the 10 days of free films to be the intriguing part of Reel Paradise and the Piersons' life to be something more interesting to them than to me.

| Original Score: C | Oct 21, 2005

A funny fly-on-the-wall account of how the Piersons ingratiated themselves to the community, with uneven results.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 21, 2005

its scattershot structure makes it disappointing and its preeminent focus on the social problems the Piersons encounter grows tiresome

| Original Score: C | Oct 18, 2005

You are buoyed by the purity of the islanders' responses to some of what Pierson shows them: the Three Stooges, Buster Keaton and, most delightedly, Jackass: The Movie.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2005

Serves not only as a charming, witty glimpse into an American nuclear family uprooted to browner pastures, but also as an exploration of how Hollywood product is viewed outside the Lower 48.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 2, 2005

The Piersons are warm, funny people, and most of Reel Paradise shows them comically bickering with each other and laughing at the absurdity of the whole project.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2005

Anyone who has relocated to a totally different environment will relate.

| Sep 24, 2005

Tthe comic fallout from his quixotic mission keeps Reel Paradise watchable.

| Sep 24, 2005

The results stay with you, like memories of an unexpected and surprising vacation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 22, 2005

Sometimes it's not whether you succeed, but whether you try.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2005

Pierson is a high-powered egotist with appalling tastes and a great-white-father complex, and his whiny family is about as much fun as fingernails on a blackboard.

| Original Score: D | Sep 15, 2005

Flames out early, with Pierson's ... ego quickly overriding the potentially fascinating socio-cultural effect of exposing the Third World to the wonders of Jackass.

Full Review | Sep 15, 2005