| Director | Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin |
|---|---|
| Budget | $37 million |
| Box office | $100.1 million |
11-year-old Nim Rusoe lives with her widower marine biologist father Jack on a secret island in the South Pacific. Nim's mother, Emily, died when she was eaten by a blue whale, after it was scared by a ship called The Buccaneer. Nim has several native animals for company: Selkie the sea lion, Fred the bearded dragon, Chica the sea turtle, and Galileo the pelican, and is an avid reader of the "Alex Rover" adventure book series.
Jack leaves on a two-day research trip to find Protozoa nim, a new species of nanoplankton he has named after his daughter. He wants to take Nim along, but she convinces him she can manage on her own and must stay to oversee the imminent hatching of Chica's eggs, both of them agreeing to communicate via satellite phone.
Nim receives an email addressed to her father from "Alex Rover", enquiring about Jack's field of knowledge. She believes it is from the adventurer, but is, in reality, from the author, Alexandra Rover, a neurotic agoraphobe from San Francisco, who believes Nim to be Jack's assistant. They begin to communicate frequently.
Jack's vessel is caught in a cyclone, leaving him stranded in the middle of the ocean and unable to communicate with Nim. Galileo brings Jack things he needs to fix the ship as sharks begin to circle the wreckage. Nim tells Alex her father has not returned as planned, while Alex feels powerless to help, given that she can hardly even open her own door. Eventually, Alex's visions of her character, Alex Rover, help her overcome her agoraphobia and travel to the island to help Nim.
Meanwhile, the island is visited by a cruise liner's crew, who Nim believes to be pirates, as the name of their ship is The Buccaneer, much like the vessel that caused her mother's death. The crew plan to make the island into a tourist destination, much to Nim's horror. When the crew return with tourists two days later, she attempts to make the island unattractive to them by catapulting Fred and various other lizards to shore, then by making a fire in the crater of the volcano and rolling boulders down the slopes to give the appearance of an eruption. In doing so, she inadvertently triggers an actual eruption, leaving the tourists and crew scrambling for the boats. One of them, a pre-teen boy, Edmund, sees and catches up with Nim. He is confused by her presence, and she tells him she lives on the island. He tells his parents, but neither one believes him. Meanwhile, Alex, having travelled through Borneo, Rarotonga and Tuvalu, arrives on The Buccaneer via helicopter during a monsoon, and attempts to explain herself to the crew, who dismiss her as delirious. However, Edmund, who overheard Alex explaining Nim, convinces her that she's not insane. Alex then escapes The Buccaneer on a stolen lifeboat. Nim sees Alex's boat capsize in the stormy sea, and saves her from drowning with the help of Selkie.
Having expected her hero from the books, Nim initially rejects Alex, but she later relents, and they share a meal together. The next morning, Nim breaks down to Alex, fearing that she has now lost both her parents. Luckily, Jack reaches the island windsurfing on a makeshift catamaran, tearfully reuniting with Nim and presenting her with her eponymous nanoplankton. Nim then introduces Jack to Alex, who is amazed at how similar Jack looks to her visions of the "Alex Rover" character.