Shoestring documentary (i.e., video) by Steve James, maker of Stevie and Hoop Dreams. On this less personal project, he appears to be no more than a hired hand, summoned to Fiji to document the last month of the year-long sojourn of John Pierson, the indie-film "guru" and TV host of IFC's Split Screen, who took along his wife and two children on his "midlife crisis slash mission," to show free movies to the natives of Taveuni Island in a dilapidated fifty-year-old movie house: X-Men 2, Hot Chicks, Bringing Down the House, Jackass, but also Apocalypse Now Redux, a program of student films (for which the natives, even for free, will not sit still), and, as his farewell offering, Steamboat Bill Jr. (Ever the movie man, he self-consciously cites The Mosquito Coast as the model for his adventure.) The results have all of the messiness -- and much of the ridiculousness -- of real life: a burglary of his house while he's away at a screening, a crazy Australian landlord, an unreliable projectionist, a rebellious teenage daughter ("You're just acting for the cameras here," snaps Mom), a contentious evangelical church in competition for Fijian souls, and a protagonist who frankly refuses to adapt himself to the local culture. It's also the messiness of four or five movies' worth of material. More than enough to afford interest. Too much to afford satisfaction. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.