One would like to think that at some point during the filming of Nim’s Island that Jodie Foster had a sit-down with young Abigail Breslin for a talk on how to handle professional success achieved at such a young age without going on to become the next Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan. In my idealized vision of a caring and protective Hollywood, some studio executive responded to Breslin’s Oscar nomination at age 11 by saying, “We need to get her paired up with a Foster or a Brooke Shields or maybe get her into a Ron Howard movie.” Considering the use of “caring and protective” in the same sentence with “Hollywood,” this is a level of fantasy beyond anything in the movie—but it is certainly a nice thought.
Nim’s Island is an adaptation of the 2001 young adult novel by Wendy Orr. And while the story is simplified somewhat, it retains the same feeling of fantasy set amid an otherwise realistic world. 11-year-old Nim (Abigail Breslin) and her marine biologist father (Jack, played by Gerard Butler) live alone on an island in the South Pacific. Their set-up on this island highlights the otherwordly reality of the movie: they have power and a connection to the rest of the world through a Powerbook and satellite Internet. But at the same time that same worldwide communication network hasn’t made it impossible for them to be living on a large uncharted island. When necessary it is possible to travel halfway around the world in two days but when an Australian cruise ship stumbled onto the island the passengers are rowed ashore. Real world peril, but the animal friends are suffiiciently intelligent to help solve problems (though, thankfully, despite what you may have seen in a misleading commercial now airing, the animals don’t actually talk).
A fine balance is walked, and what could have simply been hokey ends up maintaining a fine swashbuckling pace and sense of fun. The movie is essentially a three-person (plus three animals) movie. Nim and her father are more than happy living in complete isolation. The adventure of the story begins when Nim convinces her dad to leave her alone for a couple days while he sails to a nearby atoll to search for new forms of protozoa. Of course, once he’s out there a sudden storm rises (again, modern global communications but apparently no real-time weather information) and leaves him stranded.
Nim is happy saving her turtles and reading the latest adventure book from Alex Rover, an Indiana Jones-style adventurer whom Nim believes to be real. In reality, though, Alex Rover is Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster) a agoraphobic novelist living in San Francisco. It has been nearly four months since she left her house and despite living in a major city, she lives a life just as isolated as that of Nim, her only companionship being her Alex Rover character (who appears to her and is also played by Gerard Butler).
By coincidence, Rover sends e-mail to Jack for some help with a plot point just when he gets stranded at sea. Nim answers her and Rover soon realizes that there is a little girl all alone on a island somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The final plot point is set when an Australian cruise ship finds the unlisted island and decides that it would make a good shore excursion. Nim, of course, feels she needs to maintain the secrecy of the island and drive them off.
Image courtesy FoxWalden.
Jack’s quest to find a way home is the story that gets the least time (and, ultimately, also requires the greatest suspension of disbelief) with time mostly split between Nim’s Home Alone-style efforts to drive off the tourists and Rover’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles-esque trip from San Francisco to the middle of the ocean while simultaneously dealing with her neuroses and her mental projection of Alex Rover, a constant presence egging her on.
The role requires a fair bit of slapstick from Jodie Foster and it does feel forced at times (but that could just be it no longer being something we expect from her after so many years of pretty serious roles) but mostly there are some real laughs in the antics. Abigail Breslin is simply having fun swimming with seals, sliding down zip lines, and climbing volcano walls. For the most part no great acting is required but in the few moments that the movie does dip into some real emotion, she shows she really does have the skills, but isn’t constantly trying to show them off and turn a lark into Hamlet.
Image courtesy FoxWalden
Ultimately, Nim’s Island is a very old-fashioned piece of children’s escapism and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is not a genre that has much use for allowing real peril, violence, and a rigid portrayal of actions’ consequences (launching lizards hundreds of feet by catapult probably isn’t a good idea for the lizards’ health). If Swiss Family Robinson or Home Alone is a favorite of your childhood, then Nim’s Island has a fair chance of filling that role for your pre-teen now.
Whenever I give a negative review to a piece of cinematic fluff I get e-mail criticizing me for overthinking things and that I just need to sit back, turn off the brain, and have fun with it. My standard response is that it isn’t my job to do all of that but rather the burden is on the movie to do that to me, perhaps even despite any desire to the contrary on my part. In other words, I’m more than happy to do all of that if the movie is entertaining, and Nim’s Island does that.
The special effects used in the movie, particularly for the animal navigation, aren’t really up to par. That could have been a huge distraction, and would have been for many movies, but Nim’s Island convinces me to ignore it. A significant plot point involving Galileo, a friendly frigate bird, could have just taken the anthropomorphism too far, but by then I was under the movie’s spell and didn’t care.
In short, if Nim’s Island could overcome my curmodgeonly grumpiness, then if you have a child in the 5-to-13 age group (or even older if they’re willing to admit they still enjoy good innocent escapism) you can take them with full confidence that you’ll have a good time too.
Nim’s Island is a 20th Century Fox/Walden Media production
- Wide release on April 4
- Directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin
- Screenplay by Joseph Kwon, Paula Mazur, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin
- Starring: Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler
- Rated PG for mild adventure action and brief language
- Alex’s Rating: 7 out of 10
