It helps to be a kid - or, at least, have one - to enjoy Nim's Island. Otherwise, you're likely to be wondering aloud about the short shrift given Nim's mother's demise in the belly of a whale and whether Jodie Foster is really the right casting choice as a love interest. For kids 12 and under and their parents, who long for a film they can comfortably watch together, Nim's Island is as good as it's going to get this year.
Nim (Abigail Breslin) and her father, Jack (Gerard Butler), a marine biologist, have taken up residence on a remote, otherwise uninhabited South Pacific island where Jack does his research and Nim spends a lot of time with her best friends: a pelican, a lizard and a sea lion, none of whom, mercifully, has the ability to speak. Nim also loves reading adventure novels by the famous author Alex Rover.
All is idyllic until Jack takes a two-day voyage to gather some very special plankton but doesn't return on schedule. Nim, who had begged to stay home alone, is in turmoil when an e-mail arrives (there are a lot of creature comforts on this remote island) from Alex Rover himself. Rover has hit a wall with his new book and is reaching out to Jack, the famous biologist, for some professional advice.
Alex, however, is not Alexander but Alexandra (Jodie Foster), an agoraphobic New York writer who is terrified to open her front door, let alone get involved in the death-defying adventures she (he) writes about. Nim's correspondence with Rover eventually conveys the hopelessness of her situation. Rover feels compelled to help and before long she is on her way to the island. Foster is hardly known for her comedic talents, and in a film made for adults she might not have pulled it off. But kids need comedy painted in broad strokes and Foster's bony clumsiness and breathless attempts to overcome her fears work just fine for the elementary school set. She's perfect as the stock adult character in kids' comedies: the bumbling adult to whom kids feel superior. But in this case Nim badly needs her.
In the end, Nim's Island is about our need to find home and to people it with those we love. And it's about facing and overcoming our fears of the world beyond. That's a worthwhile place for a family film to go. The DVD's special features are intriguing for both kids and adults. Children will love the "making of" featurettes with their behind-the-scenes glimpses of the animals and stars interacting. Most intriguing, however, is a collection of deleted scenes that constitute an entire subplot, that of the characters of Nim's favourite books, Huckleberry Finn and Alice in Wonderland, accompanying her through her many ordeals. The inclusion of the subplot would have made the film thematically much more complex but it may have been more than the wholesome producer Walden Media had bargained for.
After all, one scene that hit the cutting room floor shows Nim and Alexandra Rover lying in adjacent beds as Nim asks, "Are you real?" After Alexandra assures her that she is, indeed, real, Nim responds, "Sometimes I can't tell the difference."
@email:jsipe@thenational.ae
