“Bookworm” is a quirky Kiwi comedy that pairs-up The Once and Future Hobbit Elijah Wood with an eleven year-old girl in the wilds of his old stomping grounds, New Zealand.

It’s a generally warm, kid-friendly adventure with tiny bits of suspense, a seriously scenic tale that surfs its shifts in tone well enough.

Nell Fisher has the title role, a bookish child with a matronly librarian’s name — Mildred.

When Mum has an accident, here’s how the off-key Kiwi character actor doctor apprises the child of her condition.

“She’s not dead. You don’t need to worry about that. But she’s not really alive, either.”

Seriously doc, the kid’s smart for her years. The word “coma” would do.

There’s nothing for it but to summon the child’s closest living next-of-kin. That would be an American magician living and working in Las Vegas.

Strawn Wise (Wood) believes in making an entrance. The “biological father” as he always refers to himself, makes poofs of smoke with his flint flasher thumb, does card tricks and tries to impress a kid whose won’t quite let on how worried she is about her mother.

“It’s called MAGIC,” he crows. And she’s not having it. But he can take over on that camping trip that she and Mum had planned, if it’s no trouble.

Mildred wants to find proof of “New Zealand’s Bigfoot,” a creature called “The Canterbury Panther.”

Strawn, to his credit, is game. Even though he “doesn’t know the first thing about camping.” Even though he doesn’t know this child, whose mother he um, “met” only once.

No worries. She pops into her safari togs (pith helmet included), refers to her many newspaper clippings for research, packs a video camera for the “proof” and they’re off.

Director and co-writer Ant Timpson makes the unfortunate “bookish” choice to tell the story in cutesy intertitled “chapters” labeled “Terrible Taste in Men” and the like. But otherwise, this story skates along, with a fish-out-of-water magician coming to terms with his failings and fears, a too-smart child who turns insufferable sooner rather than later, a panther and other perils to face in some of the most striking scenery on Earth.

Even the locals refer to this or that site in cinematic terms , not all of them Tolkienesque– “the rock where Liam Neeson played a lion in that movie (“The Chronicles of Narnia”).”

There’s a soft-pedaled turn towards the sinister that serves up our moment of truth as it throws in survivalism, a pursuit and narrow escapes leading to a jolting finish.

Shifts in tone aside, you’d still have to call “Bookworm” a winner — or I would — with Wood at his most vulnerable and winning and Fisher justifying her chattering pedant paycheck serving up equal parts adorable and insufferable.

Rating: unrated, peril

Cast: Elijah Wood, Nell Fisher.

Credits: Directed by Ant Timpson, scripted by Toby Harvard and Ant Timpson. A Vertical release.

Running timer: 1:43