Bookworm

Writer: Toby Harvand

Director: Ant Timpson

With epic adventuring across the New Zealand landscape, Toby Harvand’s Bookworm directed by Ant Timpson, is a sentimental father-daughter getting-to-know-you movie that cannot decide if it wants to be a fantasy story or a more serious drama about learning to parent a precocious child. What begins as a fairly standard family reunion evolves into a buddy movie in which a long absent father – who happens to be an illusionist – is set a series of action challenges that are far less thrilling than they could be in a low-stakes drama.

When her mother is taken to hospital, 11-year-old Mildred is left alone with the father she has never met, Strawn, who happens to be a magician. Promised a trip across the countryside, Strawn agrees to take her camping, leading to a series of encounters including some not-so-friendly fellow hikers and a rogue panther that stalks them through the hills which could be the money-making opportunity the family need.

Harvand and Tiimpson’s film blends fantasy and a far more serious tone that never quite evens out The primary relationship between Strawn and Mildred goes through all of the expected stages, from her outright dismissal of his claim to be her father, disappointment when he fails to live up to her expectations and an eventual unity when this chalk and cheese pairing find common ground and some form of mutual respect. Bookworm doesn’t really do anything new with this trajectory but focuses on imperilling its leads in a variety of ways.

The role reversal in this central partnership is the most success aspect of Harvand’s script, the spiky and wise-beyond-her-years Mildred doesn’t suffer fools, taking the lead in making decisions and in showcasing a bravery and resourcefulness clearly not inherited from Strawn who spends the film overcoming his adolescent attitudes and learning to parent. The fraught interaction between these characters, of a desperately unimpressed Mildred and the father who struggles to claw back any respect from his daughter, is well played.

Unfortunately, Bookworm doesn’t spend enough time really exploring this relationship or its characters before throwing them into the adventure landscape. Strawn is never properly held to account for leaving his family behind, nor does his job as a magician shape the unfolding story once they are in the countryside. Likewise, why Mildred decides to trust a man she doesn’t know, other than for plot reasons, makes little sense, and the film only plods along where its hijinks should make it fly.

Stars Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher are very good, and much of the film leaves them to it but its slips into fantasy and exaggeration are less successful than it thinks, particularly an over-egged section with some hikers played by Vanessa Stacey and Michael Smiley. In some ways Bookworm could have done more with its storylines rather than the neutral gear it uses to coast through the plot, but it also could have done much less, leaving its central father and daughter just to talk their way to a reconciliation.

Bookwormis available on Digital Platforms 11 November. Distributed by Signature Entertainment.