About 30 years ago, this is precisely the kind of film that would’ve had Jodie Foster starring as the willful, resourceful, imaginative kiddo stuck on Paradise Island and waiting for her father to return—or not—following a storm that’s 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 Alex—who, of course, speaks solely to Alexandra and is played as a spectral he-man by 300’s Gerard Butler, squeezed into Harrison Ford’s Indy hand-me-downs. Butler’s also Nim’s 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 Foster’s sitcom-campy performance), Nim’s 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 God’s deep, dark green—at least until the storm rolls in and momentarily tears them asunder. They don’t make ’em like this anymore—haven’t, really, since Jodie Foster starred in Freaky Friday.

Review by Robert Wilonsky