The Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews
From the Nurse Matilda stories by Christianna Brand, evidently a staple of British kiddie-lit.
Seven wicked children meet their match in the new nanny.
So Railroad David was visiting, and as is his wont, he had a movie that I JUST HAD to see. I humored him. Once in a while, as with Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, he suggests a really good movie. On the other hand, he’s the one who tried to get me to watch Austin Powers, which I walked out on…so his track record is not good.
But I had been mildly interested in this one, the trailers were good, and we were going to a matinee, which is cheap, so I thought, what the heck, let’s do it.
Gentle readers and devoted fans, trust me on this: if your main reason for seeing a movie is that you don’t really have anything better to do, rather than because it’s a movie you actually want to see…well, you know as well as I do how that one goes.
No, it wasn’t horrible, there were actually a couple of funny parts…but most of the talk about this one seemed to focus on the fact that this was a kids’ movie that really wouldn’t offend anyone…and like PG-13 action movies, this is the kiss of death.
Nanny McPhee is a cross between Mary Poppins (a movie Mr. Otter and I have always despised- we still remember the last time we saw it when we were both sick as dogs and out of our minds with fever, it was a truly awful experience) and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a staple of American Children’s Literature (and if you haven’t read the four Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald, run right down to the library and read them, they’re a hoot!).
The seven kids of a recent widower (Colin Firth) have made 28 nannies run away, and now Nanny McPhee is here to take charge of them…Emma Thompson in silly makeup, with warts and a sticking-out tooth and stuff, and each ugly thing on her face disappears when the children ‘learn a lesson’ (more on this later). This was a total waste of both Firth and Thompson…their parts were not much, and practically anyone could have played them.
The children were, of course, very very cute and wild and evil, getting into all kinds of mischief. The oldest of them was the same actor who played Liam Neeson’s ADORABLE son in Love Actually. But again, bad kids get reformed, pretty predictable. A completely unrecognizable Angela Lansbury plays the meddling aunt, and evidently Derek Jacobi was one of the extremely silly mortuary assistants, but it was so out of expected Jacobi territory that I actually didn’t recognize him either.
Basically, this is very very predictable. Pretty, a couple of good scenes, but not much of a much, certainly not one of the children’s movies that is so amusing for adults that the whole family will enjoy watching it over and over forever.
And I really really disliked the whole concept of ‘lessons for the kids to learn’…when Nanny McPhee shows up, she asks the dad what the kids are doing that he wants her to correct…so she browbeats them into doing what she wants them to (they won’t get up in the morning, pretending to be sick, so she makes them sick AND glues them into their beds with magic.) Any kid with gumption would just realize that there’s no use arguing with magic and would lie low til she left…but no, they reform. Each time, after only one ‘lesson’…and they’re all saying please and thank you and meek as lambs. I don’t think so…
The one good thing about this movie was the coverlets on the kids’ beds in the attic…one of them had the most beautiful granny square afghan, and I’ve actually added this movie to my netflix queue to get another look at it, since none of the stills from the movie that are available on the internet show it. But unless you’re a diehard crocheter…give this one a miss.
theotterlimits 