Elijah Wood is reunited with the rugged New Zealand landscape in this father-daughter comedy, a gentle heartwarmer with a quirky sense of humour. It makes for an ideal watch with over-10s (if you/they are tolerant of a bit of a bad language). Wood gives a lovely performance as failed Vegas magician Strawn Wise, who flies halfway round the world to New Zealand to look after the daughter he’s never met; she is the bookworm of the title, precocious 11-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher).
In the film’s opening scenes, we watch as Mildred’s mother (Morgana O’Reilly) is hospitalised by a freak toaster accident. Mildred has never met her dad (though she discovered reading mum’s diary that she was conceived in a car park on a girls’ trip to Vegas). But with mum in a coma, Strawn arrives to look after her – cutting slightly a pathetic figure in tight leather trousers and black nail varnish (think Russell Brand circa 2017). Wood can be a nuanced actor, and he brings a sweet vulnerableness to the part. Strawn is a failure as a magician; his desperation not to screw up being a dad is transparent and touching.
Eager to please, he agrees to take Mildred on the camping trip she’d planned with her mum – to hunt for a panther said to be prowling the countryside. Mildred’s plan is to collect the $50,000 reward for a sighting and solve her mum’s financial woes.
Out in the wilderness, there’s a terrific couple of scenes with Michael Smiley and Vanessa Stacey as a sinister, over-friendly couple whose paths they cross. Never for a moment is there any doubt that the movie will end any other way than father and daughter bonding and pocketing the $50,000, and this is a shameless heartstring plucker. But it’s charming and sometimes very funny.