Fantasia 2024 Review: BOOKWORM, A Parenting Adventure In The Wilderness

Early on in Bookworm, a doctor struggles to have a conversation with a child about her injured mother. The medical professional tries to ease the child’s anxiety and kind of makes a fool of himself, because the young girl just wants a straight answer, “I just want to be told the truth.” Right out of the gate, it is clear that Ant Timpson’s ‘anti-bubble-wrap’ wilderness adventure is going to be about words, and how they matter, as much (perhaps more) than the outdoor adventure put up on screen. 

 

The child at the centre of the film is Mildred (Nell Fisher), a precocious 11 year old. She is the kind kid who reads Charles Dickens, and is comfortable using big words and crisp, cutting diction to chop adults down a bit. She lives with her single mother, who means well, but is financially underwater, and struggles to understand her daughter’s ferocious intelligence and drive, but still likely understands the core truth that Mildred is still a child, parents via cloistering and catering to Mildred in her room where she lives with her books, and other delightfully analog things, like taxidermy, microscopes, and maps. These are all lovingly presented to us as a tactile opening sequence of visual props as exposition (think the dense opening credit sequences of Back To The Future, or Sahara) only with the aspect ratio pushed in very tight to underscore Mildred’s limited world.



When her mother suffers an accident that puts her in the hospital in an induced coma (the thing the aforementioned doctor fumbles explaining), Mildred’s father, Strawn flies to New Zealand to look after Mildred. The two have never met, as he never left his career as an Illusionist and TV personality in the US, and their antagonistic chemistry is immediate.

 

He lays it on thick, trying to impress her with his tricks and celebrity, but she is having none of it, using every opportunity to call him out on his bullshit. Elijah Wood, in theatrical facial hair, gets to emote bluster and wounded soul with his eyes, in both these scenes, as well as over the course of the picture. This is both a far cry from his previous collaboration with Timpson, Come To Daddy, where he was the abandoned scion, as well as the continuation of these kinds of parenting explorations. 



 

In a bit of effective guilt and manipulation, Mildred convinces her visiting biological father to take her camping in the wilderness so they can hunt New Zealand’s Bigfoot, the Canterbury Panther. A mythical big cat that has been spotted in grainy footage over the years - not just for the sake of the movie here, this is an actual thing, that is serious enough for there to be a disclaimer (perhaps tongue in cheek) at the beginning of the picture. Photographic evidence is worth a pretty penny, and Mildred thinks a camcorder payday might solve many of their financial problems.  


 

When father and daughter get into open country, the aspect ratio opens up into gorgeous scope, showcasing the best in honey-tinted cinematography that the New Zealand landscape can offer (courtesy of Come To Daddy D.P. Daniel Katz). Astute viewers of the ‘climb the mountain’ genre of adventure will take note that the initial goal of the trip is usually accomplished in a straightforward manner, but the bad things happen, ‘on the way down,’ as it were.

 

Bookworm plays its narrative on one hand grounded in realism, but like Strawn's illusionist, while you are watching that hand, it is doing something else. Not so much ‘magical realism’ but rather ‘movie realism.’  You may recognise these kind of beats when you see them, and I do believe it is intention of the filmmakers, that the audience will be in on the trick. In some ways, Bookworm has its cake and eats it too. It wants to be taken seriously, but it also wants to be comfortably traditional in Movieland. It takes itself seriously, but doesn’t take itself too serious. 



Bookworm is not afraid to introduce further wild-card elements, such as character actor and Ben Wheatley regular Micheal Smiley (Down Terrace, A Field in England), to further emasculate Strawn in a simultaneously absurd, and threatening kidnapping sequence, one of the strangest I have seen in some time. 



The film is an interesting nod to fellow Kiwi director Lee Tamahori’s deeply underrated, David Mamet penned, 1997 wilderness thriller, The Edge, where Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins are stranded in the Canadian wilderness while being stalked by a feral bear. The Edge’s original title was in fact, Bookworm, until the studio thought it would be confusing. This is a lovely way to pay homage, while reclaiming the title.
 

Substituting the real bear (movie trained Bart The Bear, who has an impressive filmography) for a surprisingly convincing CGI Panther does tone things a bit down. The panther reminded me of those “R Rated” animated MPAA rating bumpers from the 1970s featuring a big black cat roaring through the woods, and warning children under 18 to stay away. Bookworm keeps things decidedly PG, by design, except for its language and dialogue which are decidedly adult. The film is very much about words, and is not afraid to get coarse at times. What other family film would have the dad call his daughter an asshole to her face? I cannot think of one.



Such is the back and forth between Mildred and Strawn while they struggle to settle into traditional parent child roles. Respect, and vulnerability and close proximity with each other is how we grow relationships. The film alternates between these episodes, and challenges, in the form of chapter breaks, montage, set-piece, and all the other movie craft, while showcasing the chemistry between Wood and Fisher: An unconventional, but still familiar way, in which they find their way into each others wishes, hopes, and dreams.

 

Except for one clumsy fart-joke, Bookworm does not, in the parlance of Strawn’s parenting anxieties, “shit the bed.” In spite of, or because of, its sometimes silly, sometimes serious, alternating tone, it is a fun father-daughter adventure for those who like a little ‘edge’ to their family films.