Nim (Abigail Breslin, left) and Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster) explore Nim’s treehouse in Nim’s Island.

Twentieth Century Fox Films

The curiously titled Nim’s Island is a Saturday matinee kind of family film that’s crammed with enough adventures to keep even Indiana Jones busy.

Subplots abound and sometimes collide in this ambitious, colorful tale in which moppet du jour Abigail Breslin plays a marine biologist’s daughter on a faraway tropical island who is tossed into a panic when her father is lost at sea during a sudden storm. His boat is smashed apart, sending him overboard with no way of communicating with her.

But what’s this? From out of the blue Nim receives an Internet message from her favorite daredevil author, Alex Rover, requesting a bit of research information from her father. Before long, Rover has concluded from their back-and-forth exchanges that little Nim is alone on the remote island and needs help. So it’s Rover to the rescue.

Based on the book by Wendy Orr, Nim’s Island might have been no more than a pale copy of the Indiana Jones saga. But this fantasy film deals in surprising irony as much as it does in adventure and becomes something all its own. It’s a little too simplistic at times and a little too cute to attract adults by themselves. Yet its message of a lost parent and helplessness will resonate with children, not to mention scenes in which the resourceful Nim rides underwater on the back of a sea lion.

Alex Rover is the dashing hero Nim has created in vividly lifelike daydreams while reading his books about derring-do adventures. Nim pictures Rover as her real-life father, both played by Gerard Butler. In truth, however, Alex Rover is really Alexandra Rover, a scaredy-cat San Francisco author who is afraid to leave her house. Played against type by Jodie Foster, usually the first in line to take on bad guys in her other movies, who here lathers up with sanitary hand lotion even though she lives alone and rarely leaves her house, subsisting on a diet of canned soup.

But Nim’s faraway story moves Alexandra to action. Daring to defy every natural impulse in her body to flee danger, she sets off on her own adventure that will take her half way around the world to become the heroine of her own story. Well, that’s the plan, although in real life Alexandra’s fears often get the better of her. So afraid of her own shadow is the character that Foster has created that she manages to become annoyingly simple. No wonder she’s billed behind Breslin.

Nim is the more resourceful character here, at one point reawakening a dormant volcano while trying to frighten off a shipboard full of vacationers who have been plunked down en masse on her very private island’s beach. But she’s also very worried about her missing father. When Alexandra arrives — or rather when Nim must pull Alexandra from the sea before she drowns — Nim views her as just another unwelcome guest she must deal with. Nim finds that she must become the adult in this situation, at least until everything can be straightened out.

Nim’s Swiss Family Robinson life and adventures are colorfully brought to life by husband-and-wife co-directors Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett. With a girl whose best friends are a sea lion, a pelican and a lizard named Fred, even the adults who accompany their children to Nim’s Island might wish they could stay.

***Nim’s Island

Starring: Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler.

Rated: PG, contains scenes of nature’s fury, frightening moments.

mjanuson@projo.com