Nim's Island (Widescreen Edition) | Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler

Nim's Island (Widescreen Edition) | Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler | Nims Island

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Nim's Island (Wide...

	Nim's Island (Widescreen Edition) Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler 20th Century Fox, 2008 average customer review:based on 78 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nim's Island

Loved this movie. Beautifully done. Jodie Foster is wonderful. My grandchildren have already enjoyed it numerous times!

Nims Island

I watched this without the company of children and still found pleasure in the story line. It definitely requires the ability to stretch your mind into the realms of fantasy so it's important to watch from a child-like point of view. Abigail Breslin is a delight and, surprisingly, there is a moral to the story that I found heartwarming. Jody Foster is very funny, and Gerard Butler is always a pleasure to watch.

Stars Struggle Valiantly with Slow Pacing and a Weakly Developed Script

Somewhat diverting but hardly memorable, this 2008 adventure movie boasts some surprisingly bad computer-enhanced matte shots, especially in the attempt to make the remote island setting a tropical Eden. The biggest culprits, nonetheless, are the lethargic pacing and a script with neither subtlety nor tension. Based on Wendy Orr's popular 1999 children's book, the film is directed and co-written by husband-and-wife team of Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett (director and writer of Little Manhattan, respectively), who redid the original script by Joseph Kwong and producer Paula Mazur. The multiplicity of fingerprints shows in the screenplay which tries to tie together the isolated situations of three sketchily developed characters in a story that doesn't really provide thrills or genuine heart. It's a new millennium tinkering of The Swiss Family Robinson story replete with single parenting, agoraphobia, and out-of-nowhere WiFi.

The story focuses on eleven-year-old Nim, a rambunctious girl who lives with her scientist father Jack on an island otherwise uninhabited except by her frolicsome animal friends. As part of a biweekly shipment, she receives a series of books about an Indiana Jones-style adventurer named Alex Rover. The books allow her to imagine the rest of the world through the adventurer's eyes, and he shows up vividly in her imagination. With much trepidation, Jack decides to take a two-day sailing trip to look for protozoan specimens leaving Nim behind. A storm tosses Jack into harm's way, as Nim tries to ward off an onslaught of cruise ship passengers intent on turning the island into a Club Med. Through happenstance, she emails who she thinks is Alex Rover the adventurer. Instead, it turns out to be Alexandra Rover, the Marin-based author of all the books Nim loves. Alexandra turns out to be an obsessive clean freak who survives on Progresso Soup and Purell and won't ever leave her house. The rest of the story is how Alexandra comes to Nim's aid and Jack survives a sinking boat and shark-infested waters.

The omnipresent Abigail Breslin (No Reservations, Definitely, Maybe) shows she can carry a movie as Nim, but she does seem to be on the verge of overexposure. In a complete about-face from her most recent roles (The Brave One, Inside Man, Flightplan), Jodie Foster seems out of her element as she attempts to make Alexandra a slapstick comic heroine. The strain often shows, but there are moments when you realize how she would have played Nim in her tomboyish way had the film been made 35 years earlier. Also in an about-face, Gerard Butler gets to play both Jack and the fantasy figure of adventurer Alex Rover. He struggles mightily with an American accent and a microscope as devoted father Jack but swaggers with ease as a Scottish Alex. In truth, none of the three stars seems stretched here, but their innate likeability goes a long way toward making this movie palatable ...even for an old curmudgeon like me.

There is a robust set of extras on the 2008 DVD beginning with two commentary tracks both aimed more at the more youthful viewer. The first with Breslin and Foster is surprisingly low-key, while the second with Levin and Flackett is more engaging. Of more interest are the deleted scenes. The first is nine minutes long and includes footage of Nim's interactions with her imaginary friends Huck Finn and Alice in Wonderland. The second features the deleted role of Alexandra's assistant. While the additional characters provide an opportunity for more dialogue, it's arguable whether they would have helped pick up the pace of the film. Two PSAs, several trailers, and three quick featurettes, two focused on Breslin and the animals, round out the extras.

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