Elijah Wood Leads a Handsome Adventure Film

As expansive and inviting as its picturesque New Zealand landscapes, a joyous sense of adventure shines through in Ant Timpson’s “Bookworm,” a delightfully quirky father-daughter adventure with the perfect blend of childlike wonder and grown-up bite. It’s a charming escapade that brings Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” to mind — in that, “Bookworm” is for everyone who takes their family road movies with a side of maturity, breathtaking stakes and a droll sense of humor. Think “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” and “Up,” with some “Indiana Jones” mixed in, and you’ll be in the ballpark.

At the heart of the story is the 11-year-old Mildred (the terrific breakout Nell Fisher), a precocious tween being raised modestly in the Canterbury region by a single Kiwi mom working several jobs to make ends meet. In cinema, children outfitted with precociousness can sometimes be a cringey deal, like watching a young one overeagerly emulating an adult in mannerisms that are a few sizes too large. But through a genuine script by Toby Harvard (based on a story by him and Timpson), Fisher looks and sounds believably at ease with Mildred’s beyond-her-years snappy sophistication, while managing to hold onto her youthful innocence and spirit. The credit belongs equally to her and the filmmaking duo, whose narrative quirks didn’t quite work in the juvenile, blood-splattered thriller-comedy “Come to Daddy” in 2019. Perhaps their cinematic instincts work better when channeled towards younger-leaning fare.

Those instincts reunite them with “Come to Daddy” star Elijah Wood in the role of Strawn Wise, Mildred’s long-estranged American father. When a freak accident with a toaster sends Mildred’s mother into a coma, Strawn enters the picture to care for his sweetly odd daughter even though he’s never met her before. (Mildred was conceived during an unremarkable one-night-stand in Las Vegas, you see.) It’s no surprise that the two don’t bond immediately. Being a down-on-his-luck magician (well, he prefers the classier title, “illusionist”), the somewhat insecure, nonchalant and almost pathetically well-meaning Strawn isn’t exactly the picture of model fatherhood. But the lonely voracious reader Mildred — who’s both genius-level smart and an outcast at her school due to her unique qualities — decides to reluctantly team up with him on a camping trip anyway. The quest? Gather filmed proof of the existence of a much-fabled local panther and collect the $50,000 prize offered to any fearless explorer who succeeds in the mission.

Falling behind on their finances, Mildred and her dear mommy can definitely use the loot, too. So the comically mismatched duo set out into the unknown to look for the creature. While it’s nothing but predictable that the two would not only find the panther, but also a genuine understanding of and love for each other, the way Harvard and Timpson move the story forward still startles, entertains and wins hearts, with plenty of embarrassing dad jokes and tween eye-rolling to go around.

Early on, most of the film’s humor exploits Mildred’s mind-boggling vocabulary and knowledge compared to the oddball Strawn’s less-than-worldly existence. After all, he is just a mediocre illusionist who wears black nail polish to seem cool, frequently failing to impress his daughter with magic tricks. (There is also a hilarious joke at the start about who David Copperfield is to these eccentrics — a Dickens character or a magician?) But gradually, Harvard’s script cracks open the kinder depths of the duo’s familial bonding by campfires, scenic lakes and various perilous situations that they find themselves in across a gorgeous landscape that can also be hostile toward the unequipped.

The most significant of these dangers turns out to be an initially harmless-looking couple, played memorably by Michael Smiley and Vanessa Stacey. They introduce themselves as Arnold and Angelina and join the father-daughter for what could be a fun detour. The picture changes when Strawn realizes the true identity of these off-kilter personalities. On the surface, the scenes that unfold around the temporary intruders play for a few laughs and some distressing suspense. But they are also when Strawn’s disarming love for his daughter comes into sharp focus — in a moment when he is least expecting, the call of fatherhood finds him sneakily.

Always an impressive presence with his sharply wounded gaze, Wood brings much allure and comfort into his performance, understatedly expressing Strawn’s vulnerability as he rises to the occasion of parenthood. Elsewhere, cinematographer Daniel Katz’s observant camera does justice to the delicate connection between the leads, giving them both the closeness and breathing room they crave across the grand scenery meant for big theatrical screens. That much is telegraphed (quite brilliantly) from the beginning — Katz starts the movie off with a peculiar boxed aspect ratio, expanding the picture as soon as Strawn and Mildred venture out into the wild. It’s almost as if the filmmakers want to declare right at the start that their intimately-scaled film has larger ambitions in mind, both visually and emotionally. And they deliver exactly that: a deceptively small affair, unafraid to look and feel big.