About 30 years ago, this is precisely the kind of film that wouldve had Jodie Foster starring as the willful, resourceful, imaginative kiddo stuck on Paradise Island and waiting for her father to returnor notfollowing a storm thats smashed their boat to bits. Only now the role of Nim goes to Abigail Breslin, natch, leaving Foster with the thankless task of playing the agoraphobic Alexandra Rover, author of a series of adventure tales starring her fearless alter-ego Alexwho, of course, speaks solely to Alexandra and is played as a spectral he-man by 300s Gerard Butler, squeezed into Harrison Fords Indy hand-me-downs. Butlers also Nims lost-at-sea father, setting up the guess-what finale once Alexandra finally leaves the house and winds up on that remote island, for reasons far too complicated to explain in this tiny space. Yet despite its formula and flaws (chief among them Fosters sitcom-campy performance), Nims Island is a perfectly pleasant, agreeably innocuous tweener adventure film: Home Alone relocated to sandy beaches, glowing oceans, and a forest in which father and daughter are perched in the most splendiferous tree house on Gods deep, dark greenat least until the storm rolls in and momentarily tears them asunder. They dont make em like this anymorehavent, really, since Jodie Foster starred in Freaky Friday. — Robert Wilonsky