Bookworm (Me) (Kid)

Here's an innocuous, simple tale of absent fathers and alienation from the Shaky Isles. Nell Fisher plays Mildred, a young clever clogs who is suddenly motherless for a time. From the other side of the world comes the father she's never met, Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood). Things are frosty for a while until he agrees to go camping with her to find the mysterious, and probably bollocks, Canterbury Panther. Video evidence of the big cat is worth $50,000 NZD, which Mildred and her mum could dearly use, because of handy plot contrivances.

The main draw of this film (for adults, at least) is the wonderful NZ scenery. The mountains and lakes, shot by cinematographer Daniel Katz, look fantastic. But is this enough to sustain a feelgood family comedy/drama? Well, it depends who you speak to, but for me, the answer is no. Wood is charming as the comically unsure dad, though it's still very hard to see past his Frodo face, especially as, once you mentally exchange the panther for a certain gold ring, that's all you can think about. Fisher is precocious and a little irritating as Mildred, but she's supposed to be slightly unlikeable as the titular bookworm.

In general, the writing is sloppy - there's the old cliche where one character absolutely swears blind something will not happen, and after the next cut, of course, it's happening. There is at least one continuity issue, specifically a 'socks on and then off' situation. Also, the forced menace, apart from the wobbly CGI panther, feels very unlikely and not a little out of kilter in this type of film, like it's verging towards the great Kiwi thriller Coming Home in the Dark.

There are a couple of funny moments, one including a kiwi bug called a weta (coincidentally or not, the name of a digital VFX company founded by Peter Jackson). The scene where Strawn tells a campfire story to Mildred about how he fell out with David Blaine almost salvages the whole package - it's madly surreal and shows that the writers, Toby Harvard and director Ant Timpson have it in them. If only they could sustain it.

Bookworm opens at the Luna and Palace cinemas on August 29th.

See also:

Michael Smiley cameos in this and he's also the legendary Tyres in Edgar Wright's brilliant TV series Spaced (1999-2001). Elijah Wood plays against type in Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (2005).