Nim's Island

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Exhilarating and enchanting family picture. It's the best I've seen this year and highly recommended for girls and for boys, too.

Entertainment Weekly Leah Greenblatt

It's hard to imagine kids not enjoying the good-hearted, lovingly shot fantasy of it all, and Breslin is charming, though most viewers past puberty will likely yearn to be voted off the Island.

Chicago Tribune Tasha Robinson

For all its limitations, the film still looks terrific. Flawless CGI and forays into animation keep things visually lively, and Nim’s enviable life is likely to hook kids into the story early and keep them entranced.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Some nice scenery, an unexpectedly funny performance by Jodie Foster and a unflaggingly spunky Abigail Breslin make for above average family entertainment.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

This family comedy adventure from Walden Media is likable in a scruffy way. Its characters, especially the youngest one, are engaging, and few adults are immune to childhood fantasies about secluded tropical isles.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Even as the derivative roots of Nim's Island are clearly visible, kids will no doubt vicariously enjoy Nim's adventures and Edenic existence. And how refreshing, for once, to see a girl embark on derring-do that, in Nim's own words, makes her the hero of her own story.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Boys adventure stories are a dime (store novel) a dozen, but girls adventure tales are rare things indeed.

USA Today Claudia Puig

An entertaining, diverting adventure saga that offers excitement and a relatable heroine for children, and also will remind their parents of favorite classics from their own youth.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

If you're an elementary schooler or someone who finds Gerard Butler irresistible even when fully clothed, Nim's Island may be a treat to watch. If not, it's likelier to be a chore.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Breslin, so memorable in "Little Miss Sunshine," suffers the most. Skilled and reactive with humans, she doesn't quite muster the same engagement with her finned and flippered costars here.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

There's nothing especially wrong with Nim's Island, but there's not a lot right about it either.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

8- to 12-year-olds will have a good time, and you'll have a good time watching them have a good time. Otherwise, the film's an oddity.

Empire Helen O'Hara

Smarter than it sounds and carried by a very funny performance by Foster, this is a kids’ movie that’s bearable for adults too.

LA Weekly Robert Wilonsky

Despite its formula and flaws (chief among them Foster’s sitcom-campy performance), Nim’s Island is a perfectly pleasant, agreeably innocuous ’tweener adventure film.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Strictly for the 8-and-under crowd.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Such an air of dumbness hovers over the movie, and it's all played so broadly that nothing about it is remotely believable.

The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Sweet but ho-hum adaptation of Wendy Orr’s novel, a comedy-adventure that never quite finds its tone.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Foster seems to be having real fun, twitching and skittering around, that steel jaw of hers comically tense. But this family movie shouldn't be about a shut-in trying to get from A to B; it needs to be about an unconventional girl growing up and helping an equally unconventional grownup cut loose on a volcanic island. Sadly, Nim's Island is a missed opportunity.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin deliver some eye-catching fantasy sequences in the early scenes, but the film grows more mundane and the tone more uneven as it goes on.

Los Angeles Times Tasha Robinson

The premise, from the book by Wendy Orr, is terrific, but the execution seems designed to make all but the youngest viewers fling copies of the book at the screen in frustration.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Three stories in one. This might be two stories too many.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

You begin yearning for more cuteness from the anthropomorphic animals: a pelican, a sea lion and, best of all, a bearded dragon lizard. They're a lot more amusing than Foster, who pours on the angst.

Variety Justin Chang

A picturesque adventure-comedy that quickly capsizes under the weight of its obnoxious slapstick, pedestrian dialogue and general unwillingness to rise above stock ideas and situations.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The movie's dated, stereotypical comedy often contradicts its wholesome intentions, coming across as laboriously cutesy and occasionally perverse.