Fantasy Nim’s Island a Misadventure for Foster
Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin) and her scientist father Jack (Gerard Butler) live in the shadow of a volcano on a deserted tropical island. They have made their own version of paradise, the daughter spending her days lost in books, playing with her sea lion, pelican or lizard friends, or working out scientific theorems revolving around new discoveries in plankton with her dad. It’s a great life, and even though it’s just the two of them Nim can’t imagine anything better.
Jodie Foster looks for a way to escape 20th Century Fox's Nim's Island
Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster) is the author of a series of best-selling adventure novels written under a pseudonym and featuring an Indiana Jones-style character whose imaginary spirit (also played Butler) just happens to dog the agoraphobic San Francisco writer’s each and every move. For someone who crafts exciting prose about facing pits of gigantic spiders in Arabia or escaping from bubbling pool’s of volcanic magma in the Pacific this woman is a complete and utter mess, so afraid of her own shadow she makes a pre-Jack T. Colton Joan Wilder look positively cosmopolitan in comparison.
For all intents and purposes, Nim and Alexandra should never meet, but when a tropical disaster leaves her father lost somewhere at sea the young girl suddenly finds herself lost and alone. She turns to Alex in hopes of salvation, not realizing the person she’s emailing isn’t a strapping male adventurer willing to do anything to save the day but instead a mousy female writer so timid even raindrops hitting the window pane force her into panic attacks.
But Alexandra will rise to the occasion. She will leave her home, get on a plane (and a boat, and a helicopter, and another boat, and even one more boat after that) and head to Nim’s island. No little girl should ever be left alone, not even one that sounds as confident, determined and smart as this one does. Alexandra just hopes she’s not too late – even if she doesn’t have the first clue as to what she can do to help when (or if) she actually gets there.
For those that didn’t catch the Romancing the Stone reference earlier, the new film Nim’s Island is the Middle School version of that classic 1984 Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner romantic comedy adventure. But the four screenwriters adapting Wendy Orr’s book here don’t do near as good a job as the late Diane Thomas did on that earlier production, the whole thing as poorly plotted and as dully realized as anything I’ve seen this year. Where that film was witty, this one is stale; where that one was funny, this one falls flat; where that one reveled in exhilarating excitement, this one wallows in yawn-inducing boredom.
All of which is more than a bit too bad. The always fun to watch Foster throws herself into the production completely, delivering a no-holds barred portrait of insecure angst and timidity that, at times, is a giggle-filled hoot. But like other recent strong turns by the actress in pictures like The Brave One and Flightplan all this effort goes for naught, the film surrounding her so obnoxiously juvenile and chaotically idiotic at a certain point it can’t help but turn into nothing more then a grating annoyance.
What’s most upsetting about Nim’s Island is I’m not even sure the tween girl audience the film is aimed at is going to like it. Breslin is spunky and cute, sure, but she spends so much time acting like a petulantly spoiled brat even her most forgiving peers could be excuse for having a sudden urge to slap her. Nim isn’t a great role model, her preposterously selfish father even less so, and any parent that urges their child to emulate her probably should have their head examined.
- Review reprinted courtsey of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links:
- Nim's Island Theatrical Trailer
