11-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher, Evil Dead Rise) lives up to her grandma-sounding name. She’s smarter than any adult, does not suffer fools, and is generally a dick to everyone, including her doting-if-overprotective single mother. When mom winds up in a coma, her absentee father, Strawn Wise (Wood, and I swear they were saying Strong the whole movie), a never-was magician who she’s never met, shows up to take care of her. And how does this awkward man-child take care of her? He takes her deep into the wilds of New Zealand to find proof of a local legend, the illusive and potentially deadly Canterbury Panther, and win a $50,000 prize.
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The first hour of Bookworm hews real close to the formula. Strawn has regrets, Mildred has a hidden motivation for wanting the prize money; they feel each other out, they bond, they fight, it all happens right where such things happen in these stories. It’s fine and well done, but it's familiar. At almost exactly the hour mark, the story takes an interesting turn and becomes harrowing in a unique, engaging way. This is where the movie is strongest and most authentic. The rest feels like a preamble to get to this point, where it can go off script so to speak and create its own path, much like the characters blazing a trail through uncharted, at least to them, terrain, both literally and metaphorically. It also gives the core duo a concrete common enemy, which helps focus the plot.
The actors carry most of the load, and Wood and Fisher have strong chemistry, both in the strained stage of their relationship and later, when their connection deepens and grows. They’re fantastic, which is good since the bulk of the film is them together and no one else, even if there are a few issues with the script. The dynamic Timpson creates is one where Mildred is the mature, adult one while Strawn is basically a large child. He's the kind of guy who insists on being called an illusionist and has a story about being tragically and hilariously betrayed by David Blaine. That part works well and stays true to character, even as Strawn grows up over the course of their adventure.
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Mildred, on the other hand, is less consistent, waffling here and there seemingly for narrative convenience. She’s ultra-precocious and smart, at times pushing dangerously close to the bounds of believability. The point the script seems to want to make is that she puts up this tough exterior as a defense mechanism and that eventually, through this burgeoning relationship with her father, will break down somewhat, but the script never truly gets there, jumping around in regards to motivation. Like, she needs to be an irrational brat here and have a meltdown so this thing happens because the plot needs to move forward. There are a million reasons why this could be the case—an actual script issue, they didn’t have time to film a sequence, a scene just didn’t fit so they cut around it, and so on—but the result is that there are some irregularities when it comes to Mildred that don’t always fit the character or have a true impetus.
Cinematographer Daniel Katz (The Beast Within) shoots the living hell out of New Zealand. From jagged mountains to dense woods to idyllic lakesides, this is a great looking movie. Timpson places the actors in these spectacular environs to expand on the inner worlds of his characters. They trudge along a sweeping mountain crest on opposite sides of the frame to emphasize the maybe insurmountable distance between them. Trekking along a tight forest trail forces them together just as an external threat does the same. It’s a nice melding of the internal and external to create thematic depth and resonance.
Though it’s uneven in several regards, and follows a paint-by-numbers plot for a significant portion of the movie, Bookworm is ultimately a cute, heartfelt, if a bit slight, tale of connection and reconciliation. It’s a warm hug, a well-meaning cup of hot cocoa that just makes you feel good.
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