BATTLING AN INDIE BOX-OFFICE SLUMP - IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

JOHN PIERSON is the top behind-the-scenes guy of the American independent film movement. A kind of broker/agent/promoter, he's been instrumental in getting the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Kevin Smith and many others off the ground.

In 2002, Pierson moved his family to the small Fijian island of Taveuni for a year, during which he showed movies in the world's most remote theater for free. The last month of this cross-cultural adventure is documented in ``Reel Paradise.'' The movie proves that, while film can indeed be a universal form of communication, there are some things Americans and Pacific Islanders are never going to get about one another.

Director Steve James captures Pierson, his wife and business partner, Janet, their rebellious 16-year-old daughter, Georgia, and smart-mouthed 13-year-old son, Wyatt, at various wits' ends.

Though showing current and classic movies to an appreciative, highly responsive audience of Fijians has been gratifying, John has become frustrated with no-show projectionists, his dissolute Australian landlord and a series of home burglaries while the family was out entertaining the borderline impoverished community.

Though smart and self-aware, John can come off as an insensitive dweeb who cares more about films than the people he is purportedly serving. In his defense, the man does go to great lengths to put on the best shows he can to an audience that prefers the likes of ``Jackass: The Movie'' to more serious fare such as ``Rabbit-Proof Fence,'' and even contracts Dengue Fever for his efforts.

``I'm the guy in 'The Mosquito Coast,' '' he admits early on, and while things don't turn out anywhere near as badly for the Piersons as they do for that film's back-to-nature family, John does have a glimmer of Harrison Ford's overbearing mania in him.

It's up to the more sociable Janet and the kids to introduce us to individual Fijians. That is, when mother and daughter aren't fighting about Georgia's increasingly freewheeling behavior. James, who directed the incisive basketball documentary ``Hoop Dreams,'' spends too much time on what is, after all, a commonplace conflict between parents and children at this age. But there is a satisfying amount of coverage of Islanders' culture and home life, too.

And Janet, if nobody else in her family, is often painfully aware of the different consequences certain behaviors hold for her kids and their friends who will not soon, nor probably ever, be leaving this small society. If the film has a conscience, she's it.

Movie love in all of its absurd, sometimes hilarious and deeply heartfelt mutations is a big part of ``Reel Paradise'' too, as well it should be. John Pierson may not be all that different from previous incarnations of arrogant Western missionaries (it's noted that he comes from a family of Presbyterian ministers). But unlike the priggish Catholic establishment that he comes in conflict with, Pierson calls his flock to sheer enjoyment, and that makes some kind of difference.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

REEL PARADISE - Three stars

(R: language, nudity)

Director: Steve James.

Running time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Independent movie promoter John Pierson moves his family to Fiji to run a theater for a year. Good and bad times are had by all in this overlong but interesting culture-clash documentary.

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Photo:

The Pierson family - Wyatt, left, Janet, John and Georgia - m oved to Fiji for a year to operate a movie theater.