After the dark comedy Come to Daddy, New Zealand director Ant Timpson travels back to his home country with lead actor Elijah Wood for Bookworm, an adventure designed for all ages. In his introduction at the opening of Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, Timpson cited 1970s family movies as an inspiration and admitted he wanted nothing more than to make a good, entertaining time for audiences. That aim is apparent in every moment of Bookworm, whose odd-couple pairing of an estranged father and his precocious daughter on a camping trip gone wrong feels engineered to be a broad crowd-pleaser. But Timpson, along with co-writer Toby Harvard, prefer to take the easy way for achieving their goals, the film leaning into dated comedy and a relentless charm offensive that makes its efforts too strained to fully embrace.
The film starts with Mildred (Nell Fisher), an 11-year-old girl who spends most of her time reading as many books as she can. This makes Mildred overeducated for someone her age, which translates into an assured manner of speaking that has her constantly patronizing her single mother and any other adult she deems beneath her intelligence. After her mother falls into a coma due to a freak accident involving a faulty toaster, Mildred gets taken into the care of her absent father Strawn (Wood), a failed magician who flies in from America. Looking like a blend of Criss Angel, Dave Navarro, and a mid-life crisis, Strawn doesn’t impress Mildred with his crude tricks and lack of contact for her entire life. In an attempt to win over his daughter, Strawn agrees to join Mildred on a trip she originally planned with her mom: a trek into the New Zealand wilderness with the hopes of capturing footage of the Canterbury Panther, which locals claim roams the area (and it’s a very real urban legend). Capturing photographic evidence of the panther comes with a cash prize that can help Mildred’s mom resolve her financial woes.
Timpson signifies the start of Strawn and Mildred’s trip with a change in aspect ratios, the screen expanding horizontally from a boxy Academy ratio to Scope that lets the vast, gorgeous New Zealand landscapes dominate the frame. It’s an old trick applied in a fashion that may provide immediate gratification, but doesn’t amount to much more. Such logic is applied throughout. Much of Bookworm‘s comedy comes from making fun of Strawn, who fits the stereotypes of a laughable magician––his insistence on being called an illusionist, his half-assed attempts to act like magic is real, his ridiculous make-up and outfits, wearing black nail polish. Problem is that these jokes dried up in the 2000s (the magic / illusion joke goes as far back as the 2003 pilot of Arrested Development), and reviving them now is less nostalgic and more like picking from a rotten pile of the lowest-hanging fruit.
Wood, a reliable performer who’s carved out a strong niche for himself in genre cinema, does his best with the stale material. But the ineffective nature of his role means he takes a backseat to Fisher, who leans into her role as Mildred with gusto as she goes from plucky assuredness to afraid and vulnerable as the stakes get higher. Cinematographer Daniel Katz works with Timpson to take advantage of the setting to create striking imagery that’s ineffective within the film’s context––most images amount to plopping characters in the center of the frame or using shallow focus close-ups. The welcome addition of character actor Michael Smiley as a traveler who disrupts Strawn and Mildred’s plans, livens things up momentarily, but the film soon settles back into its predictable, repetitive rhythm. Every time Mildred interacts with someone new, the dialogue has to point out that she “doesn’t talk like other kids,” in case it wasn’t clear the first several times.
Timpson might be a victim of bad timing. Bookworm comes after two successful examples of the kind of film he’s trying to make: Weston Razooli’s Riddle of Fire and Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (the most obvious recent comparison; it also takes place in New Zealand) both pull off the right mix of laughs and thrills, with enough of an edge to make them step out from the shadow of their influences. Bookworm looks watered-down in comparison, with the darker side Timpson established in Come to Daddy popping up in flickers––see an early highlight with a callous doctor who informs Mildred of her mother’s coma in one of the strangest ways one could tell a child––but Bookworm prefers to bend itself to fit the mold of its predecessors rather than the other way around. Though that strategy may make for a safe bet, it comes with the cost of material that’s more familiar than fresh.
Bookworm had its North American premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.
The post Fantasia Review: Bookworm is an All-Ages Adventure That Feels a Bit Stale first appeared on The Film Stage.
