Review of Nim's Island (2008) by Zach Z — 18 May 2010

How much you enjoy Nim's Island will depend on how much you can suspend disbelief. It's not exactly fire-breathing-monsters silly, but it does raise a few fundamental questions that don't seem to have occurred to its team of writers. (There are four, not including the writer of the source novel.) It will also depend on whether you see (or particularly mind) the difference between a plot, and an entertaining sequence of events.

In the main, it's about a girl (Abigail Breslin) called Nim for some reason, who lives alone on an island paradise, except for her marine biologist father Jack (Gerard Butler) and a bunch of (universally friendly) animals. Nim lives a contented life in what many of us would consider Heaven, except for the fact that she doesn't know any other human beings besides her father. She also seems unable to distinguish between the characters in her favourite books and the people who create them; picking up the latest adventure to feature heroic Indiana Jones-type Alex Rover, she simply assumes the author is he, and that all these adventures happened to him. That's a pretty major misunderstanding, and the film coasts right over it, along with the fact that Nim and her Dad are basically living the movie Cast Away, but with flushing toilets and amazing internet access. Anyway, the island is a complete mystery to the entire world - apart from, presumably, the supply ship that comes once a month, the nearby islanders who will take tourists there if asked, and at least one internet administrator somewhere in the world who must have signed Nim up to AOL, or whatever. They live in paradise, Absolutely No Questions Asked.

So when Jack gets lost at sea, Nim is lost too. What to do? As it happens, Alex Rover has been in touch asking about Nim's local volcano, and she asks him to come and help. Who better? Except Alex Rover (Jodie Foster) is really a woman, an agoraphobic, and lives thousands of miles away. (We can at least partly blame Nim's author/subject confusion on Alex's unimaginative character names. But seriously - don't her books come with author blurbs? Even the little bit marked "Fiction" must have been a dead give-away.) Unthinkably, Alex sets out to rescue Nim, with only her imaginary namesake (also Gerard Butler) for companionship. It's great fun watching Alex struggle to even get out the door, let alone to Nim's island; in the film's best scene, Nim's nonchalant scaling of a volcano is juxtaposed with Alex trying to get far enough from the house to pick up her mail. The kinship of these two social outcasts is obvious, yet skilfully drawn, even if one is a diagnosed agoraphobic and the other, equally devoid of human contact, is somehow seen as being fortunate. (Yeah, it's a lovely place, but has Nim ever met a grown woman before, or other children? What kind of socially backward adult is she turning into, with only sea-lions for company?).

So Alex travels halfway around the world to rescue Nim, who's got problems of her own when tourists threaten to descend on her island. (She seems to think they're characters from a story too, leading me to wish Alex would hurry up and rescue her from what looks like a life of total, if serene, madness.) The two characters have their plots and they get on with them, while poor stranded Jack struggles to stay afloat while sharks circle his sinking boat. The film chunters along admirably, with the variety of three plots keeping it perfectly buoyant, and the attractive locations - and plentiful laughs - making the whole process enjoyable as anything to watch.

But there are three plots, not one, and they never come together. At least, not in any way that pays off all that waiting: the ending is a happy one, all high-fives and the promise of a beautiful future, but these characters hardly know each other. We've spent the whole movie waiting for two of them to meet, and they don't seem to get on very well. Can we really be fobbed off by the simple assurance that it looks pretty promising? It's not unreasonable to think that in a movie where one character is in distress, and another races to rescue them, the crux of the matter will be their ensuing relationship. They actually meet seventy minutes in, and the film's ninety minutes long, with credits.

It's still a lot of fun, partly thanks to a couple of hilarious animals Nim hangs around with, and Gerard Butler has fun with his dual role. (He's better as the imaginary superhero. Duh.) Jodie Foster brings her usual best to the role of a well-meaning basket case, and it's her personality the most that seems unfairly fobbed off by the ending. Magically cure her agoraphobia, okay, and enrich her life with this whole rescuing-Nim escapade, but really, pairing her off with a guy she's never met, with whom she barely exchanges a syllable of conversation? By way of explanation, he happens to look just like she imagines her character would. Oh, right. Makes sense if you're about six years old.

Almost all of this occurred to me after watching it, I should point out. While it was actually on, I got a thorough kick out of Nim's Island. The whole thing is sublimely innocent - and, okay, pretty dumb - and just bobs along very entertainingly. It's a lovely film, honest, with enough flourishes of colour to distract you from the all the stuff that just doesnâ??t quite add up. It's got Jodie Foster as a charmingly troubled novelist, Gerard Butler as the Scottish Indiana Jones, and a hilarious screeching lizard that steals every scene he features in. That it all refuses to really come together is a bit of a shame (although, really, it's obvious this is the case once the film passes the one hour mark and the characters still haven't met), but it's still plenty enjoyable enough to be worth watching. The parts are wonderful. Maybe try not to think too much about the whole.