63
Metascore
22 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The New York TimesStephen HoldenThe New York TimesStephen HoldenReel Paradise is a deliberately untidy, open-ended, thoroughly absorbing chronicle that lets the lives of its characters spill across the screen without editorializing.
- 75New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickWhile type-A Pierson worries about his projectionist showing up and a break-in at his family's home, his wife frets that the mass importation of American films will contaminate the local culture.
- 70Film ThreatFilm ThreatAn honest look at the experience of a family who lives a yearlong tropical movie adventure on a remote island in Fiji.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterIt's an engrossing and often very funny tale.
- 70TV Guide MagazineKen FoxTV Guide MagazineKen Fox"Survivor" meets "Cinema Paradiso"in this wonderfully entertaining documentary about a film fanatic's quest to bring Hollywood movies to a remote South Sea island.
- 60VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyAlthough it will most readily appeal to cinephiles…offers sufficient reality-based incident and ponderable cultural issues to attract curious audiences.
- 60The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe 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.
- 50New York Daily NewsJack MathewsNew York Daily NewsJack MathewsThe result is a gorgeous, third-person version of an extended family-vacation movie that the Piersons, their friends and their former Fijian neighbors can enjoy for years to come.
- 42Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment WeeklyPierson, with his carrot-thin frame, gogglish specs, and gnashingly quick temper, traipses around Taveuni like the king of the white-man geeks, alternately proclaiming the saintliness of his crusade and throwing tantrums whenever somebody else fails to sufficiently recognize it.
- 40Village VoiceVillage VoiceUnfortunately, what could have been a superficially amusing IFC reality series was stretched into a thin, overlong feature that follows the rocky integration of this very New York clan into a somewhat ruffled island society.