Nim's Island (Abigail Breslin)

(Amazon UK link)

We’ve picked up a lot of DVDs over the years, many of them second-hand. Since we have regularly had young friends coming to watch a DVD, we made sure that there was a good collection with U rating for them to select from when they were small. There were some which we were familiar with, of course; I bought quite a few children’s classics when our own sons were younger. But others were completely new to us. 

Recently I thought it would be a good idea for us to watch some of them - not the 3d animated ones which I dislike intently, but the ones with real people. Last night we decided to watch ‘Nim’s Island’.  I had no idea what it was about, but I know our young friends quite liked it a few years ago. 

The star of this film is Abigail Breslin, who is perfectly cast as 11-year-old Nim. She narrates the start of the story, illustrated with cartoons, showing how her mother was eaten by a whale when Nim was three. So she lives with her father, Jack (Gerard Butler). They went around the world a couple of times on his boat, as he’s a marine scientist, always looking for new forms of microscopic life.  And now they have settled on a tiny island which doesn’t have any other human inhabitants. 

Nim has been educated by life, by travelling and by extensive reading. And she is clearly very bright, courageous and creative. She looks after her father well, cooking on a camp fire with local vegetables and mealy worms. She also has several friends amongst the local wildlife. She is accompanied by a sealion and a lizard, and regularly spends time with birds and turtles. She’s excited that one of the turtles is about to give birth. 

So when her father says he’s going on another boat trip, she refuses to go with him. She wants to protect the baby turtles when they emerge. She is confident that she can look after herself, and he’s only going to be a couple of days.  They have a satellite phone system, and satellite Internet, and she can’t possibly come to any harm…

Inevitably he gets into trouble with a sudden storm, losing his mast and seeing his boat start to leak. We don’t know whether or not he’s survived until much later in the film. But Nim, in the meantime, gets an email from someone called Alex Rover. Alex Rover is the hero of some adventure stories that Nim loves and reads avidly. 

What she doesn’t know is that the books are written by a woman, Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster), who is the polar opposite of her creation. She has agoraphobia and hasn’t left her flat for several months. Alexandra wants to know some details about volcanoes for her current novel, and she knows that Jack lives on an island with a volcano. Nim pretends to be Jack’s assistant, and - curious herself - sets out to climb the volcano and look inside. It’s fraught with danger, and I found that scene a bit stressful.

When Jack doesn’t return after three days, Nim sends a message to Alex - assuming that she’s communicating with the hero of the books - asking for help. Just to confuse things a tad, we see an image of Alexandra’s creation in her apartment, talking to her, telling her she should face her fears and go to help Nim.  Neither of us had realised that this imaginary Alex - who wears a cowboy hat and speaks with a Scottish accent - is played by the same actor as Nim’s father.

It becomes more and more surreal… and yet we were totally caught up in the storyline. There are some humorous scenes when Nim constructs catapults to frighten away some tourists, and as we watch Alexandra, accompanied by Alex, travelling across the world to be with Nim. There are some quite scary water scenes, partly set in the storm, and a dramatic undersea rescue. 

Overall, it’s a lovely feel-good warm film, as much as anything due to the way that Abigail Breslin is so perfect in the role. She has an expressive face, she’s very athletic, and everything she says sounds realistic, even though we realised afterwards that no eleven-year-old could be quite that amazing.

The animals are realistic, and are apparently a blend of real animals and CGI. This is seamlessly done, and works extremely well. 

There are some good extras on our DVD, including some interesting deleted scenes, explanations of how the water scenes were done, and some commentary from the actors.

Definitely recommended!  The rating of U reflects the lack of violence, nudity, bad language and so on. The tense scenes might disturb a sensitive child, as. might the implications of the dangers at sea, and possible drownings.  It's unlikely to interest a very young child anyway. But I'd recommend it for children of about eight or nine and upwards, ideally watching with an adult.  Or for adults like us who enjoy watching U-rated films sometimes.

Review copyright 2026 Sue's DVD Reviews