Not believable. So many of these "wild person" movies have been done, from Tarzan to Crocodile Dundee, that we know what to expect of them...nothing believable, and nothing to learn from. Characters in other movies have been suckled by wolves, raised to swing from vines like apes, to fight crocodiles by the Australian Aborigines, raised by Indians and taught to dance with wolves, who knows what else? The only thing is, it could never happen. Raised by people in other societies, yes, but children raised without contact with any other people, it's impossible. Nell, if she had been living like the story has us believe, would have matted hair, filthy skin that was callused from head to toe, and she would be eating caterpillars and bark, not the groceries that were delivered to her door every week. And if the grocer knew where she was living, so would everybody else. Who pays the grocer? Why is she wearing shoes that fit? Why is her skin so soft and smooth? Why does her sister have to be an identical twin to make their own language...she could just as easily be a cousin. The thing that bothers me the most is that the average hillbilly in the mountains of North Carolina are much worse off than she is, and yet she is the one with new clean clothes and perfect teeth, while they are the ones with none. You want to make a movie about hillbillies in NC, then just go into the woods and film an average family in those hills, you don't need to drag Jodie Foster in with 25 makeup artists to hide blemishes. We have her in a cabin near a road that some local bikers have found. Are they the first people who ever stumbled on that cabin? The US government has surveyed every square inch of land in this country, and census takers know where every cabin or shack is. I have 28 acres in a part of the Adirondacks that are every bit as remote as the hills of NC, and when I tried sneaking a cabin in there, within a week I had the Town Officials up there wanting to see my permit. The movie is impossible.
Review of Nell
