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Abigail Breslin waits to be rescued in Nim’s Island |
Foster sinks as this desert island story gets a bit lost
NIM'S ISLAND
Directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin
Certificate 12
THIS could, and should, have been the family film of the summer.
Picture the scene: a remote South Pacific island, swaying palm trees, achingly white sand beaches, whiskery sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks.
And there’s young Nim (Abigail Breslin) aged 11, who has lived all her life there with only her widowed father Jack (Gerard Butler) for company. He’s a marine biologist who spends his time studying what’s in the water, leaving his young daughter to her own devices. So far so good. This could be a magic carpet ride for kids who dream of faraway places.
But then we meet Nim, and find an arch moppet with the kind of permanent smile fixed to her face that you want to demolish with a custard pie. When she announces: “I learned all about life from my friends,” and the friends turn out to be a lizard named Fred, a honking sea lion that dances round the table with her, and a screeching parakeet, we know we’re in trouble.
Abigail was just gorgeous as bespectacled Little Miss Sunshine, with an Oscar-nominated performance that won our hearts. Now, minus glasses and growing up fast, she has become nature’s child with a Hollywood makeover.
She is left by herself when Dad sails off for a spot of salty research on the open seas. Back in two days. Or not – after his boat is wrecked in a storm.
Meanwhile (now hear this!) the story takes on a new dimension as we meet Jodie Foster, a neurotic writer of true-life adventure books starring daredevil Alex Rover.
Nim is his greatest fan, and when her father stays missing she sends off a despairing email pleading: “I need you, Alex Rover!”
Upshot: Jodie makes the trek to the island, and wades ashore to find her most faithful reader in a beach-side shack, waiting for the handsome hunk who never existed.
Amazingly, Foster produces the most lamentable display of her career, one she will surely want removed from her CV. Yes, that serious, Oscar-winning Jodie Foster with a string of illustrious roles behind her, now over-acting like mad, eyes rolling, turning in a risible performance.
But after all that, I am still left with the uneasy feeling that this could become one of the popular family films of the coming weeks. After all, you can’t get more escapist than a dancing sea lion, can you? |
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