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This Laurel Greenberg documentary is a meandering mess that wanders among topics and loses sight of its focus. It begins well, as an exposé of the suspicious details of Florida’s 2000 presidential-election results, but then goes on to explore racial disenfranchisement, September 11, synchronized swimming, a small-town teacher who loses the election for Palm Beach county commissioner, etc. Each interviewee is a microcosm of the film’s incoherency, as if he or she had been asked to complete the sentence "The 2000 elections were bad because . . . " The best attempt at an overarching plot line is golf-bag-toting Deidre Newton, a real-estate mogul turned post-2000 activist who interacts with some of the other interviewees — she’s an ironic protagonist, seemingly better suited to host Hawaii night at the beach club than to inspire progressive reform. But Trouble in Paradise is not a politically powerful film: it’s unconvincing and yet too one-sided to pass as journalistically objective. Timely as it might be this summer, it’s just a historical summary of elections past, with no take-home message. (73 minutes)
BY JESSICA WEISBERG
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