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Nim's Island
Directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin
Written by Joseph Kwong, Paula Mazur, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett
Starring Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler
Classification: PG

A children's update on Robinson Crusoe, Nim's Island is the story of a girl growing up on a remote Pacific island with her father and a menagerie of pets. Based on a children's book by Canadian-born, Australian-based writer Wendy Orr, the movie was created under the auspices of family-values-oriented Walden Media (The Chronicles of Narnia). Yet the movie's dated, stereotypical comedy often contradicts its wholesome intentions, coming across as laboriously cutesy and occasionally perverse.

Directed and partly written by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, creators of the romantic comedy Wimbledon, the story is set on a remote South Seas island where a reclusive scientist named Jack Rusoe (Gerard Butler) lives with his 11-year-old daughter, Nim (Abigail Breslin). In the opening sequence, featuring Breslin's voice-over, young Nim tells the story of how her parents met and fell in love and then how something happened to Mom. According to Jack, she was swallowed by a blue whale, which might lead a viewer to suspect that he did something unpleasant to his wife and is now involved in some diabolical experiment in raising a child in social deprivation.

Since then, Dad has left the world behind and the two of them now live blissfully among their animal friends. There's Selky the sea lion, Galileo the pelican, Fred the lizard and Chica the sea turtle – all of whom squawk and nod and respond in reaction to Nim's chatter, perform household tasks and occasionally engage in rescue missions. When Dad heads off for a three-day plankton-hunting trip, he leaves his daughter at home in the care of the animals, presumably confident that he's far enough from civilization to avoid prosecution for child abandonment.

Among Nim's comforts are the novels of her favourite author, Alex Rover, who writes stories about an Indiana Jones-type hero (also known as Alex Rover), who repeatedly escapes torture and death at the hands of unpleasant ethnic types. As Nim reads, her fantasy hero is played in her imagination by her father, dressed up in Indiana Jones garb, fighting Arab nomads while leaping over and about her bed.

Coincidentally, Nim's dad also appears in the fantasies of author Alex Rover, a neurotic shut-in in San Francisco. When Rover is surfing the Web trying to figure out how her fictional character can escape from a volcano, she comes across Jack Rusoe's name and e-mails him for advice. Nim, who assumes Alex is a man, responds to her favourite author and the two begin a correspondence. Alex learns that Nim is alone and in peril. Prodded by her fictional hero, the author decides that she must leave her house and go rescue the girl.

The middle section of the movie involves all three characters struggling with their fears: Jack caught in a storm at sea; Nim, home alone with a wounded leg, trying to fend off a pirate-themed tour company and a shipload of obese Australian tourists; and Alex, fighting her anxiety attacks through airport security and her long trip, negotiating her way among incomprehensible foreigners.

Nim's Island brings together Breslin and Foster, plucky female stars from two different generations, but since both Nim and author Alex are in the thrall of an ultra-masculine hero, any feminist message is muted. Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) is mostly assigned to interact with animal co-stars, though her move from the naturalness of childhood to self-conscious adolescence is competent enough. The adult actors fare much worse. Butler, who wears the same sideways grin whether as father or swashbuckling hero, looks palpably uncomfortable. Foster, presumably weary from playing her recent series of roles seething with repressed angst (Panic Room, Flightplan, The Brave One), unveils an arsenal of dotty spinster tics, spasms and eye-popping mugging.

In every scene, comic or sentimental moments are intrusively emphasized by Patrick Doyle's orchestral score, making sure that Nim's Island leaves no emotion understated. For anyone still needing guidance on how to respond, there's a steady stream of cutaways to concerned lizards and cheerful sea lions to supply the emotional cues.