Nim's Island Review

I took my seven-year-old daughter to see this film and she thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Nim is a young girl who lives with her scientist father on an uncharted island in the Asiatic Sea.  Her best friends are a sea lion, a lizard and pelican.  She is fiercely independent and treasures their secret island. 

Alexandra Rover is an agoraphobic author who writes best-selling novels about Alex Rover, a world-traveling adventurer, a la Indiana Jones.  She only eats Progresso soup and uses a lof of hand santizer because she worries about germs.  And she occasionally imagines Alex Rover, the male character from her books, as a real person who sometimes talks to her. 

Nim's dad, Jack, reluctantly agrees to let Nim stay behind while he goes off for two days to search for a new type of flourescent plankton.  But when Nim's dad doesn't come back after two days, Nim becomes worried, especially after a cruise ship carrying Australians on holiday stumbles upon their island and plans to turn it into a vacation spot for their passengers. 

While writing her latest novel, Alexandra needs to research volcanoes, so she decides to contact an author who recently wrote about volcanoes, Jack Rusoe, who's Nim's dad.  Pretending to be her dad's assistant, Nim writes back to Alex, but after a few exchanges, ends up confessing that she's alone and scared (and injured after a fall) to Alex. 

Overcome with worry for this young girl she's never met, Alex sets out to find Nim and help her.....but she has to actually leave her house first.   

The animals were funny, and one flying lizard made my daughter and I laugh out loud.  The independence displayed by Nim was wonderful for girls to witness because young female heroines of their own lives are not that easy to find in the movies, unfortunately. 

From an adult perspective, the movie was a bit disjointed, leaping back and forth between the agoraphobic Alex struggling to endure the trip to come to Nim's aide and Nim's Swiss Family Robinson -style plans to drive the cruise ship passengers away from her beloved island and Jack's attempts to return to Nim.  

The paper pictures used to advance the story in places were gorgeous and well worth going to the movie for.   I am not familiar with the book upon which this is based, but I would guess that the book was illustrated with similar pictures. 

Overall, a fun family picture that the the whole family will enjoy.