Fantasia Review: 'Bookworm' Is Family Film Done Right With A Never Better Elijah Wood

By Jason Adams | Film | August 5, 2024 |

By Jason Adams | Film | August 5, 2024 |

If you’ve been jonesing to see the gorgeous blues of Elijah Wood’s extraterrestrially ginormous eyes contrasted against breathtaking New Zealand scenery again—just like back when we were still innocent and young and full of wonder, barely a twinkle of Gollum in our hearts—then have I got the movie for you. Bookworm (which just premiered at the Fantasia Film festival) reteams our favorite former Frodo with Come to Daddy filmmaker Ant Timpson for what turns out to be a much lighter and sweeter romp than that darkly funny 2019 collaboration. And in turn Elijah Wood gives what might just be his greatest performance to date. This is a lovely and charming little father-daughter adventure tale, awash in heart and humor and hallucinogens and panthers and kidnappers and farts. All you could ask for from a family entertainment, really.

Very much in the vein of 1970s classics like The Bad News Bears or even Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore—movies that had kids as main characters but treated them as complicated human beings and not cereal commercials—Bookworm is really the story of 11-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher from Evil Dead Rise). A loner with her nose always in a book or her eye always pressed to a telescope, when we first meet Mildred she’s got her mind fixed to a big scheme—a newspaper is offering $50,000 for photographic evidence of the so-called Canterbury Panther, a giant black cat that has long been rumored to stalk the wilderness not far from Mildred’s hometown.

Mildred wants that money. And she’s got the bulletin board of red string and clipped out articles about fully devoured families of four to prove it. Her already overprotective mum Zo (Morgana O’Reilly) isn’t too keen on the idea of her daughter, no matter how ingenious she might be, marching into the boonies to hunt a people-eating panther. Which really seems like the only responsible parental attitude to have toward such a plan. But it seems Matilda’s worn her down, and so mum’s taken off a weekend from one of her several jobs in order to take her daughter on that camping trip after all.

Unfortunately for mum this is a trip never to be, after a meet-cute with a malfunctioning toaster leaves her in a medically induced coma. Enter Strawn Wise (Wood), aka Matilda’s long distance dad. Very very long distance—born of a one-night stand in Vegas eleven years previous, he and Matilda have never even met before. A once major-league magician (although he prefers, as he will make clear several times over, the term “illusionist”) long since down on his luck, Strawn seizes on the opportunity to get to know this little stranger that shares his DNA when he gets the call, and immediately boards the next plane New Zealand bound.

And it’s a rocky path for the twosome. Literally and figuratively, as Matilda is rightfully snotty to this elfin weirdo in black nail polish who appears at her door the next day, flashing lame card tricks and guy-linered lashes at her. Until she realizes she too can seize onto this opportunity—use the deadbeat dude’s guilt to get her on that camping trip after all. And before you can say “David Blaine” three times they’re on their way. Panther, ho!

So it’s a coming-of-age odd-couple road-trip comedy that we’ve got ourselves here then—the mythical animal hunt of it all giving the whole thing a kind of Kiwi Wes Anderson vibe. Timpson and his D.P. Daniel Katz (who also shot the also-very-good-looking recent Kit Harington werewolf movie The Beast Within) lay the cinematic 70s groove on thick, with lots of hilarious pans and zooms, while also taking full advantage of the country’s world-class vistas. There is indeed a Lord of the Rings-esque fly-by shot of the twosome walking along a mountain ridge. Plus tons of warm Massengill-commercial-worthy pastoral scenery that father and daughter scamper amongst set to a dreamy phalanx of long forgotten needle drops. It’s a vibe, a great vibe, and I dug it.

And I may have called the movie “sweet” up top, and it is, but it tempers itself out with plenty of sour. Mildred spends much of the trip angry, lashing out at Strawn, and scared about the state of her mother. And Strawn’s in no easy place either—his formerly fire-hot career in shambles, this trip is helping him find his way as much as it is Mildred. They’re both kinda being assholes, and it takes one to know one—what better way to bond than to be able to call one another out on one’s bullshit as a big killer cat bears down on you in the literal middle of nowhere?

A true family film that speaks to both young and old on equal terms, we don’t get movies like Bookworm nearly often enough these days—the last one I can think of that got it this right was last year’s wonderful Judy Blume adaptation Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. But generally these kinds of flicks are even fewer and further between.

Fisher is lovely, especially in the moments where we get a peek past Mildred’s hard-shell. But Wood definitely steals the show, whittling this weirdo’s artifice down as the wilderness chips away all of his long-built-up affectations. He manages to deliver a mid-film monologue about the humiliations of Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Pussy Posse” of all ridiculous things that escalates to become as hilarious as it is upsetting. This is a handcrafted showcase for Wood’s one-of-a-kind off-kilter energy (akin to how he was used in the now seemingly forgotten but truly wonderful TV series Wilfred on that front) and it’s a pleasure. An absolute pleasure. Bookworm is set to become some shared comfort between a kid and parent that they’ll revisit forever, and what’s more meaningful than that?