MOVIE ANALYSIS: Nim’s Island

Be the hero of your own story.

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a movie hew so closely and so explicitly to theme. Yet this little film about a girl living on a South Pacific island, and who has amazing adventures, provides writers a wonderful lesson in how theme informs story. For that reason (and Jodie Foster’s brilliant performance as a neurotic writer), Nim’s Island is worth seeing.

If you’re not a fan of anthropomorphic animals, you may want to pass.

Nim’s Island, adapted from Wendy Orr’s YA novel, is a vehicle to showcase current It-Girl child actor Abigail Breslin. It’s a light diversion for the tweener set, especially for girls who are tired of school-centered dramas or parents who’ve had enough of fantasy novels rendered into film. Other than the talking animals, it’s pleasingly free of CGI special effects and takes the power of stories and books seriously.

The logline: Nim lives on a remote island with her researcher father Jack (Gerard Butler). When Jack encounters disaster at sea while studying plankton, Nim sends out an e-mail SOS to Alex Rover, an agoraphobic recluse played by Jodie Foster. Rover, the author of wildly popular adventure novels featuring an Indiana Jones-type hero named–wait for it–Alex Rover (Butler again), is compelled by the girl’s plight and her own latent desire for adventure to overcome her agoraphobia, and heads to the island to rescue the girl. Meanwhile, “pirates”, Aussie tourists, and nature herself challenge Nim at every turn. Can she hold out hope for her father’s return before their idyllic island is invaded? Will Alex Rover learn to be the hero of her own stories? Will Jack survive being lost at sea? Is there any doubt of the outcome at all?

Kids will laugh themselves sick at the farting seal and flying lizards. What makes the movie bearable for adults is Foster’s and Butler’s smooth competence and repartee, and the way theme is gracefully interjected in each scene. Nim is an old hand at being the hero of her own story, and it’s nice to watch a film with a child protagonist who is plucky without being cloying, and who deals with fraught situations courageously and without dramatics.

More interesting is watching Foster’s character of Alexandra Rover trying to become the hero of her own story. Whether she has to deal with a lack of Purell Hand Sanitizer in Bora Bora, or her book’s protagonist Alex Rover coming to life at inconvenient moments, one wishes she’d do more of these type of movies and give the psycho dramas a break. Foster possesses a real flair for slapstick, and when in the grip of one of her neuroses, the theatre roared with laughter.

The character of Jack, Nim’s father, also has his own story to complete as he battles being lost at sea. How he becomes the hero of his own story is a compelling narrative, sadly undercut by the pat resolution, and, ugh, more anthropomorphic animals. It was refreshing watching Butler in a role that didn’t have him gutting someone with a sword. He’s also genuinely funny, and the scenes he has with Breslin are natural and touching.

Finally, story as a theme is woven with a bright thread through the film, and as a writer I appreciated how books and the power of the written word was showcased. It would have been easy for the filmmakers to concentrate on the lizards and seals, but in the end, it’s books that have the starring role in this movie.

If you have kids, take them to this little film. They’ll enjoy it. If not, wait for the DVD to come out. It’s worth two hours to see how theme can be employed to elevate a simple narrative.

Kathleen Bolton

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.

She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.

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