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Nim's Island (2008)

Director: Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin

Time Out rating

Average user rating

16 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Nim (Abigail Breslin) is an 11-year-old girl living with her scientist father (Gerard Butler) on a remote island in the fictional South Asiatic Sea, and her only contact with the outside world is through email and a series of novels purportedly written by tough-guy adventurer, Alex Rover. So when Nim’s father is lost at sea, she naturally calls out to her hero for rescue. But the real Alex Rover is quite different: agoraphobic, clean-freak Alexandra (Jodie Foster) hasn’t left her San Francisco home in six years.

One could argue that the makers of ‘Nim’s Island’ are rather irresponsible: the island is a health and safety nightmare, crawling with wildlife and festooned with rickety rope bridges, vertiginous cliffs and even an active volcano. Nim’s supposedly perfect father has no reservations about leaving his pre-pubescent daughter alone for a few days while he goes off to study marine plankton, with only a farting sealion for companionship: the film’s debt to ‘Home Alone’ is evident, but this time the parental abandonment is entirely intentional.

Husband and wife writer-director team Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett were responsible for 2006’s winsome ‘Little Manhattan’, but their work here is far more muscular: solidly mainstream and surprisingly dark. For older viewers, the film is riddled with flaws: the story is pat, the ending laughable, and Jodie Foster’s attempts at physical comedy are cringeworthy at best. But for younger viewers this is a perfectly serviceable distraction, pacy and packed with incident, engagingly simplistic, with a winningly proactive heroine.

Author: Tom Huddleston 2008-04-29 11:21:55

Time Out London Issue 1967: May 2 - 9, 2008

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User reviews of this film

Jenny said...

Posted on May 12 2008 20:19 Absolutely dire. Jodie Foster must be down on her luck to have agreed to this. Abigail Breslin was wonderful in 'Little Miss Sunshine' but spends the entire film with a tortured grin on her face. Why does she keep calling her father 'Daddy' then 'Jack'? Gerard Butler is not much better. Woeful. Dire. Avoid like the plague. Oh - and as for the scene when Nim is on the computer and is asked questions like 'How old are you? Are you on your own?'' Gee, great! So much for trying to teach our kids the importance of being safe on the computer when Nim invites a total stranger to come to the island...
Woeful!

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