BOOKWORM - Mark Reviews Movies

Bookworm, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 17, 2024

The girl is only 11, but she seems to have things as together as an 11-year-old kid can. That's good for Mildred (Nell Fisher), the child in question, because she's basically on her own after the opening scene of Bookworm. Sure, her father turns up after Mildred's mother is hospitalized, but the way the father keeps referring to himself as the girl's "biological father" suggests a tactic to protect himself from the responsibility of parenthood, to protect Mildred from his parental incompetence, or maybe both.

The father, by the way, is Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood), a professional magician—sorry, "illusionist"—whose career is in a rut. He once was on television after a successful run of shows and street tricks in Las Vegas, but that ended after another illusionist became much more popular and left Strawn to be forgotten and relegated to making balloon animals at the birthday parties of the children of celebrities. On top of that, he may be washed up, but it looks as if he could use a wash himself, since his long hair is tangles and his clothes look as if they might not have been washed since he wore the outfit to complete the look of an edgy street magician.

Meanwhile, Mildred is, as the title suggests, an incredibly smart and clever kid, always reading or coming up with homemade inventions or otherwise occupying her mind and putting it to novel use. That's how we meet her, testing a makeshift trap on the family cat in the hopes of putting the design to bigger and more profitable ends. Before that can happen, though, Mildred's mother (played by Morgana O'Reilly) has an accident with a toaster, putting her a coma.

The girl's upset, of course, but that's mostly because she and mom were supposed to go on a camping trip to find evidence of a rumored creature that has confounded and terrified people in the New Zealand wilderness. It's a panther, which isn't supposed to be part of the island country's ecology.

The plot of Toby Harvard's screenplay really begins when Strawn arrives and, feeling the pressure to impress and console and make things easier for the daughter he has never met, agrees to take the mother's place on that trek into the wilderness. Director Ant Timpson lets us feel that call to the wild, too, as the cramped, boxy aspect ratio of the prologue widens as soon as the father-and-daughter team get their first glimpse of what's ahead of them. It's a wide expanse of long plains, rolling hills, towering mountains, and who-knows-what-else in between them.

Mildred doesn't know, because she has spent her life in the company of books like David Copperfield in her little town. Strawn definitely doesn't know, because this is his first time traveling halfway around the world to New Zealand and he has spent his life studying illusionists like David Copperfield. Father and daughter definitely don't know each other or much about each other's interests, because there's an early misunderstanding of what the name David Copperfield means to each of them.

This film is smart, funny, and gradually touching about its characters and their increasingly tenuous situation. Harvard gives us a firm sense of who both Mildred and Strawn are from the start and why they seem incompatible as a father and daughter, except in the basic terms of biology. Yes, they bond over the course of the journey, as they're forced to spend time together in the middle of nowhere while facing obvious and hidden dangers. It's a lot of effort, though—not only because of the perils of the wilderness, but also because, well, they really are just that different as people.

The story here presents a nice balance between its character work, especially by way of spot-on performances from Fisher (as a precocious kid who's aware how annoying she may be to some) and Wood (as a guy who might be too well-meaning for his own good and level of competence), and its desire to present an old-fashioned adventure tale. It's quite fun in that second mode, as the mismatched pair of unlikely adventurers use their assorted skills—with Mildred's book-smarts being far more useful than Strawn's ability to make a single spark from his fingers at the wrong time—to survive and search for the mythical panther. There are other dangers, including some strangers (played by Michael Smiley and Vanessa Stacey), a rickety old rope bridge, and the big cat itself.

It's not giving away too much to say the panther is real here, because the two find it pretty early into their expedition. However, there's still a lot more for them to overcome in nature and in their previously estranged relationship.

That father-daughter relationship does become the heart of the story, though. It's genuinely funny at first, because Mildred is too smart to be talked down to and Strawn hardly seems prepared to deal with any kind of child—let alone one who can figure out his magic tricks and see through his personal flaws as readily as his daughter can. Harvard's script doesn't just settle for comedy. The two of them talk—really talk—about their shortcomings, fears, and regrets about their lives apart and slowly hint at what their lives together might be like—if only they can live through all of the obstacles that end up in their way.

Bookworm, then, is genuinely exciting in that traditional way of a solid adventure story. It might be more compelling, however, as a study of how that adventure brings these two characters together in a tangible way.

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