Bookworm at Fantasia Fest 2024

July 18, 2024
New Zealand | English
2024 | 103 Minutes
Director: Ant Timpson
Cast: Elijah Wood, Nell Fisher, Michael Smiley

Elijah Wood and New Zealand have been synonymous with one another since Wood took on the role of Frodo Baggins, the star Hobbit of Peter Jackson’s brilliant Lord Of The Rings trilogy – and now he returns to New Zealand as a magician. Sorry. Illusionist, in Ant Timpson’s Bookworm.

Based on films alone, I’m not sure there’s a more beautiful location on earth upon which to make a movie than the splendor of New Zealand. With its vast landscapes, rolling hills and massive amounts of greenery; from a viewers perspective – it is paradise. Little wonder then that Wood chose to return and film there.

See Also: Ten must-see films at Fantasia film festival 2024

Paired with Kiwi youngster Nell Fisher – a name that will certainly become a household name in the years to come, and under the direction of Ant Timpson, who steps away from the horror spectrum for a minute to focus on what is ultimately a family-friendly yarn with several undertow messages woven into it, Wood again shines.

From this point on, there might be spoilers. Tread carefully.

Eleven-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher, Evil Dead Rise, Stranger Things) is a super-precocious bookworm, wise beyond her years, with no patience for slackers or the generally uninformed. Despite living in stunning New Zealand, she’s being driven mad by a mundane existence, taking refuge in cherished novels where adventures live without limit. A sudden family crisis rattles Mildred’s world, causing her absentee father, Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood, Lord Of The Rings, Green Street Hooligans), a washed-up American illusionist, to fly into New Zealand in an attempt to be… helpful? Or even the slightest bit present.

You see, Strawn has been an absentee father in the most absolute sense, in that he and Mildred have never once met. Now, he’s there, much to his daughter’s unimpressed annoyance. As a bid at bonding, Strawn agrees to take Mildred out into the New Zealand wilderness for a camping adventure in search of a mythological beast that’s long held her fascination: The Canterbury Panther.

Of course, chaos ensues or we wouldn’t have much of anything to watch, write or read about. Wood goes camping in the woods with his daughter, the end.

Instead, we get to witness the coming together and attempted bonding of estranged father and daughter while elements come into their path that test that already fragile bond and challenge them both to adapt to an already difficult situation. Amusingly enough, the main reason for this camping trip falls to the backbones and almost becomes a side-story that runs parallel to the new story arc that is developing as we roll along.

While this is certainly not untrodden grounds here, Bookworm finds itself along the trails and does incredibly well in building its characters. Of course, having talent such as Wood and Fischer is paramount to making this sort of thing work, but a nod to the writer who penned the script, Toby Harvard, is well due. While this seems on paper like something Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson might have taken on, this film is thankfully devoid of one-liners and the vocal dreck we have come to expect from Hollywood of late.

Part of the charm comes from the elegance and intelligence that spews from young Fisher, who truly is a charm to watch on screen. Again, the writing is also a breath of fresh air that leaves the stereotypical brain dead chatter out and instead does what films used to do – Bookworm makes us care about the characters and makes us want to see then succeed.

My only gripe, if it can even be called that, is that the CGI used to create the mythical Canterbury panther is a tad wonky, when in motion anyway. Yet, that being the only negative I had to mention shows to what level I enjoyed this film.

Read More:
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Kicking off this year’s Fantasia festival on such a high note is hopefully an omen for the things yet to come. The pleasures they’ll have to show us. Feed us.

For anyone that wasn’t able to attend this sold out Fantasia premiere; worry not, as Bookworm will find its way to cinema screens across the nation this Fall, and while we don’t yet know when, we will find out and we will pass that information along to you. Stay tuned!

 

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