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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: 20th Century Fox
Salesrank: 3721
Released: August 5, 2008 |
| Our Price: $1.96 |
| Used Price: $0.99 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin) lives on a deserted island with her scientist father Jack (Gerard Butler) and her best friends: Selkie, a sea lion; Fred, a bearded dragon lizard; and Galileo, a plucky pelican. But when Jack goes missing at sea and the island is "invaded," Nim reaches out via e-mail to the adventurous author (Jodie Foster) of her favorite books, and together, each discovers what it takes to truly become the hero of your own life story.
Description of Nim's Island (Widescreen Edition):
Adventure doesn't always begin with pirates on the high seas or explorers deep in the desert; sometimes it starts with an idyllic life on a private island in the middle of the South Asiatic Sea. For 11-year old Nim (Abigail Breslin) and her father and microbiologist Jack Russo (Gerard Butler), life is perfect thanks to their love of nature, Jack's mechanical ingenuity, and regular deliveries via supply ship. Loneliness is never an issue for Nim because of her special friendships with Selkie the sea lion, Galileo the pelican, and Freddie the iguana and her education is intensive, if rather unique. Adventure and imagination are ways of life for Nim whether she's heading out to sea to help her father collect plankton specimens, playing soccer on the beach with Selkie, or delving into the latest Alex Rover adventure novel, but everything changes when Jack departs on the boat for a two-night expedition to collect plankton specimens and gets caught in an unexpected storm. Alone on the island, Nim begins to worry about her father's safety as well as her own and, through a chance email, connects with Alex Rover (Jodie Foster) whom she begs to come help find her father. Problem is, author Alexandra Rover is an unbalanced big city shut-in who's afraid to leave her townhouse, not the fearless adventure hero portrayed in her books. Nim, Alexandra, and Jack embark upon the adventures of a lifetime in which each must overcome his or her own fears and perceived powerlessness and limitations in order to grow and help one another. The question is; can each prevail against his or her own insecurities and the fury of nature? Based on the novel Nim's Island by Wendy Orr, Nim's Island is first and foremost a captivating adventure full of suspense and peril which also offers a touching look at the love between a father and daughter. (Ages 7 and older) --Tami Horiuchi
Beyond Nim’s Island on DVD
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium on DVD | 
Horton Hears a Who! on DVD | 
Alvin and the Chipmunks on DVD |
Stills from Nim’s Island (Click for larger image) Nim's Island (Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
risk and redemption 
2009-12-31 - ...with a tagline for everyone, "Be the hero of your own story!"
You can read about principals and producers on the website and check out the narrative here on Amazon and elsewhere, so I'll highlight Selkie the sea lion, whose name suggests mythic Celtic and Scandinavian shape-shifting seals, the pelican named Galileo for free-flying conveniently natural GPS wherever you are (even on a remote island in the South Pacific whose inhabitants aspire to not being found by anyone ever), and Freddie the bearded dragon.
Especially as an artist and dweller in a coastal desert I love the tertiary color palette of the film - but what else would you find in an island setting? - along with relatively sparse though essential special effects. Patrick Doyle's wistfully fresh music fits perfectly. Concerning becoming the hero of our own stories, in this film, literally Berkeley-bound by agoraphobia Alexandra Rover (think about the implications of possessing a name like "Rover"), Jack Rusoe the dad and Nim his daughter all deal rather predictably with their own stuff as circumstances, the needs of others and more than a hint of irresistible grace push them into new dimensions. All three principal characters are tightly caught in their own self-defined world (since the dad in the story was wearing a wedding ring, I assume he'd been widowed) and for sure every one of us is most of the time, but how do those liminal, transitional moments marked by vestiges of what was and hints of not-yets and months full of fear, promise and future happen if by grace someone or something other than ourselves doesn't push us out of where we are?
Playing along with the closing credits is U2's "Beautiful Day"--
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town
You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case...
A Favorite in our house 
2009-12-26 - My 7 year old daughter has fallen in love with Nims Island. My four year old son and I enjoy watching it also. I have wondered if the message in the movie is correct in conveying that it is okay to maroon yourself on an island and not go to school. However, I really don't think this is the message my daughter is getting. I think she just enjoys Nims brave attitude, and watching all the funny antics of the animals.
Charming for Children 
2009-11-30 - Nim's Island / B001APZMJI
I often find that movies targeted towards children are just as enjoyable for the adults, but "Nim's Island" might be a rare exception for me.
Which isn't to say that there isn't a lot here that is fun and light-hearted - described best as a cross between the "Swiss Family Robinson" and "Home Alone", young Nim captivates the screen as she fearlessly explores her island in her father's absence, and protects the pristine beauty of her lovely home from the littering tourists who threaten to encroach on their way of life. Nim is completely charming, wonderfully vivacious, believably vulnerable, and disarmingly likable. Her character is possibly one of the most independent, empowered depiction of a young girl in movie memory, and for that alone the movie is to be congratulated for filling a much needed void.
Foster and Butler, too, are superb actors - as always - and Foster's sympathetic portrayal of a frightened agoraphobic thrust into the big, scary world in a desperate plea to rescue a small, alone girl is truly beautiful. Foster carefully mixes bravery, fear, and anger in perfectly measured amounts, leaving audiences cheering for more.
Children will enjoy the 'castaway' lifestyle portrayed and the easy joy of being isolated and empowered on a gorgeous island with dozens of animal 'friends' to pass the time. Adults, however, may find themselves impossibly distracted by the realities of the situation - the movie, taken seriously, is portraying that it is somehow healthy for a little girl to be completely isolated from all human contact outside of her father (who keeps reminding her how much like her deceased mother she is), who is so ill-prepared for this task that he doesn't even have an "in case of emergency, call..." plan in case Nim is left alone in an island accident. Apart from the isolation, Nim is also poorly served in the lack of a serviceable education for the situation - she hasn't, apparently, been taught how to disinfect cuts, which would seemingly be a crucial talent in an area completely lacking in basic medical care. This completely unhealthy situation comes to a head when a young tourist boy finally comes face-to-face with Nim and proclaims, in horror, that she is all alone - a climax that is apparently then happily discarded when the designated surrogate mother washes up to keep Nim-and-Dad company. All I could think was the coming adjustment as Nim has to learn to share - for the first time in her entire life - her father's attention with another human being.
Of course, these concerns are not to be taken even remotely seriously - this is light-hearted children's fare, as close to reality as flying carpets and genii. Children will likely find the adventure charming and captivating, and adults can probably enjoy it as long as they never slip into the error of taking the movie seriously, and just remembering that this is fantasy in its purest form.
~ Ana Mardoll
The girl and the agoraphobic
2009-10-26 - Nim Russo (her mother "invented" the name before vanishing at sea, purportedly down the throat of a whale) has a life many kids might envy. She lives with her father, Jack, on an isolated South Sea island where they generate their own power, grow their own food, connect with the world via satphone and satellite Internet, and get a visit from the supply ship every so often; no one but its crew is allowed to know their location, and no one including the crew is allowed to step ashore. At 11 she's totally homeschooled (or "island-schooled," as she calls it), mostly by way of the many books they order, and associates only with her father and her pets, including a sea lion, a pelican, a sea turtle, and a spiny lizard. Jack is a marine biologist whose fixed obsession is the discovery of a new one-celled organism, to be named Protozoa Nim. One day he heads out to sea in their little sailboat to see if he can find it. Nim stays behind to rescue the little turtles about to hatch from her pet's nest. When a sudden storm cripples Jack's boat and leaves him unable to communicate with his daughter, and Nim finds her island about to be "invaded" by Buccaneer Tours, it's up to her to find a way to fend off the outsiders. For help she calls on Alex Rover, the world's greatest adventurer--who, unknown to her, is actually the creation of Alexandra Rover, a seriously agoraphobic San Francisco novelist. But when Alexandra discovers that her new cyberpal is an 11-year-old girl left alone on an island and coping with a 5" gash on her leg, she somehow finds the courage to conquer her fears and set out on a wild journey halfway around the world.
Nim, played by Abigail Breslin, is a child-heroine for today and one boys and girls alike should enjoy--cool under pressure, resourceful, self-sufficient and free. Jodie Foster manages to bring Alexandra to life in a slightly over-the-top way, with an exaggerated sort of humor that's unexpected given her previous roles. Gerard Butler plays a dual role--Jack and Alex, who's a combination of Indiana Jones, Richard Halliburton (see Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels), and Lawrence of Arabia. This is a fun family movie with a slightly improbable yet somehow plausible story. Recommended.
Nim's Island
2009-08-30 - Nim's Island comes across with a clean, crisp transfer. Excellent sound and some very interesting special features. All in all, a pleasure to watch-good movie for kids and adults.
