Nanny McPhee

From the years 1964 to 1974, British children’s author Christianna Brand wrote three books that focused on bratty children needing to be taught a lesson by a strict nanny with magical powers. While this may sound like a pretty clean-cut replica of the more famously known Mary Poppins story by P.L. Travers, the similarities don’t seem to feel like copyright or outright stealing and just rather taking a familiar lay-out and featuring similar elements to create something that houses more of vulgar edge as opposed to the fantastical realism that came from the Mary Poppins stories. Both feature a family that needs a nanny to straighten out their unruly children, and both feature a nanny that uses magical violence and psychological torment in order to train the kids to be better or else face the consequences (its classic childhood delight). But while Mary Poppins would go on to become one of Disney’s best movies in 1964, Nurse Matilda would have to wait an extra thirty years before she got her own film version, and not only was she not given the benefit of being released by a multi-billion-dollar company, but they also couldn’t even keep her name the same when the eventual film was released in 2005, being re-titled to the more marketable, Nanny McPhee. In Victorian Britain during the 1860s, the audience is introduced to the Brown family, which consists of the father, Cedric Brown (played by Colin Firth) and his seven unruly children, Simon, Tora, Eric, Lily, Sebastian, Christianna, and baby Agatha or ”Aggie” (played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Eliza Bennett, Raphael Coleman, Jennifer Rae Daykin, Samuel Honywood, and Holly Gibbs). In need of female assistance after his wife tragically passed way, Mr Brown has repeatedly tried to give them a nanny while he works as an undertaker, but the children always chase them off with their bad behavior. When it looks like there are no more people who are willing to take up the job, one mysteriously shows up late on night. The nanny in question, Nanny McPhee (played by Emma Thompson) is an ugly elderly woman who seems to possess magical powers to forcibly make the children behave, distressing them all especially Simon. Whether through actual means or through magical abuse, the children will learn to behave and slowly start to show respect to their father before their life is ruined by their domineering Aunt Adelaide (played by Angela Lansbury) and Mrs Selma Quickly (played by Celia Imrie), a rude frilly woman who might end up becoming their new stepmother. In terms of movie quality, it’s easy to say that Mary Poppins is far superior to this movie in almost every way, but how does this movie hold up on its own?

In terms of what the actual structure for the story is, the set-up is a very basic premise which makes sense given that it comes from a children’s books; it has the multiple mishaps, the cliched characters, the lessons that need to be learned, and the goofy situations that unfold due to either childish antic or magical escapades. Overall, the books sound like they have a very similar style to the movie, yet it seems like the movie managed to inject even more tiring cliches that the books didn’t even feature like a dead mother, a scullery maid falling in love with the father, and the children having to get rid of a mean stepmother that they don’t like. The story really isn’t something that works if you’re looking for something new or engaging, and with the script being written by Emma Thompsen herself (who has been known to dabble in the screenwriting helm for films that are either period pieces or containing a comedic edge), you can feel that preference from the film’s mindset of  ”a crazy tone and comedic gags over thought and originally”. It’s not like the movie needed anything grand or special, but it just doesn’t offer much from a scripting level, even though it does function better due to the film’s surprising hint of cynicism. One of the benefits of being a semi-Mary Poppins clone is that it surprisingly has a bit more of a meaner side than the original Mary Poppins (and that’s already saying a lot, the original Mary could be pretty bitter and cold also), as this movie almost boils a baby and forces the children to have measles in order for them to be better. While that darker element does give this movie a bit of a unique edge that makes it strangely sick but in a way that doesn’t feel overly hurtful, it doesn’t do it nearly enough to last the whole movie as well as to offset the incredibly ‘’cutesy’’ atmosphere that it had previously. It’s overly bouncy, annoyingly scored and most of the plot is treated with too much ‘’sweet nothings’’ that it becomes a pain to sit through. The directing by Kirk Jones (who had previously only directed one film prior to this with Waking Ned) doesn’t do a good job balancing the tone of this movie, as neither end feels genuine, and the overly sappy nature felt especially during the first act of the story is too forceful and unnatural to allow any feelings of sentimentality to feel the least bit real. Thankfully, as the movie progresses, these issues do fade and it eventually forms into being more tolerable, controlled in a sensible manner, and even slightly heart-warming in a generic sense. Its pandering and even manipulative in its emotional moments, but by the conclusion, it at least becomes stable enough that it isn’t annoying to sit through and it’s charming enough that it doesn’t completely leave your memory despite the clichés.

For a movie that feels like it’s definitely trying too hard to be whimsical and child-like, the actors are actually taking this content pretty maturely, at least when their allowed too. Of course, there’s plenty of over-acting done by most of the bad guys or comic relief in the movie and that can be a bit much, but thankfully a majority of the main actors do try to give pretty decent performances despite the material they have to work with not being the most original or interesting. A majority of the children are completely forgettable, as would be expected in a project that has over seven of them to keep track of, and they don’t add much and only exist to stretch out the number of children they can show in pain. Outside of the main kid played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster who is given more focus and is therefore allowed to provide a decent performance, all the others are pretty forgettable and are only one-note tropes despite most being perfectly passable as child actors go (even though the talking baby gimmick feels irritatingly pandering). Most of the adult actors like Colin Firth and Kelly Macdonald are doing pretty good, and people like Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, and Angela Lansbury are having fun playing these very obvious caricatures. It makes sense that the star of the movie would be Emma Thompson as Nanny McPhee herself, and it’s nice seeing how she differentiates herself from a role like Marry Poppins. Mary Poppins hides her stern nature and cold delivery behind a cheerful appearance, whereas McPhee hides her pleasant attitude and motherly energy behind a wall of cold and direct deliveries, it’s a simple flip of the personalities, but it does strangely work out. Her visual appearance getting better as the children grow acts as a nice visual gimmick for the film that not only shows the progress being made, but also feels like something right out of a children’s book of this variety. Her blatant sarcastic delivery and attitude can also be pretty enjoyable to watch most of the time, resulting in some of the few genuine laughs the movie gets even if her writing is nothing (Emma Thompsen is a very funny actress when she’s allowed to be). It’s clearly a fun role and even though she does feel like a Mary-clone, the differences are clear enough that she would have worked as her own iconic figure even without the heavy shadow.

The movie’s color palette and production design by Michael Howells is incredibly bright and confronting almost to an overbearing degree, having an old-fashioned, semi-rural quality to most of the houses and locations while also looking like the inside of a Barbie doll house through the bright and often glaringly out-of-place color choices. Sometimes it can be okay when the environment is supposed to be wild, uninviting and like if a kid’s entertainment program was used as leftover construction pieces for a town’s new houses, but after a while it can get a little retina-burning. One of the biggest problems with the movie is the tone it has and how annoyingly it portrays it. The movie thinks that the children watching are dumb and can easily lose focus, so they fix that by having constantly unfunny writing and physical slapstick, a ton of annoying sound-effects, camera work by Henry Braham that is way too intrusive and in your face most of the time and CONSTANT loud obnoxiously bouncy music composed by Patrick Doyle that never shuts up. It takes what could be an atmospheric, laid-back even slightly adult movie about handling a broken family and makes it the most loud, annoying, and uninviting thing to witness. This makes the opening act unbearable to sit through and really starts to the film off on a really rotten start. Thankfully, as the movie goes along, things start to mellow out; the camera work feels more restrained and even better angled, the music is thankfully more quiet and even nice in moments, the colors can look nice and at least feel intentional ugly in moments like with Mrs Quickley’s extravagant and obviously tacky place of residence, and it stops trying to tell a lot of stupid jokes and instead just tries to tell the story as it is. Despite a lot of these people who were behind composition of the music, production of the sets, and cinematography going on to do better things with their talent and were clearly much better there, all the worst of their abilities is shown off in the opening and a lot of the pretty decent stuff is only shown off near the end.

Nanny McPhee is definitely not a pseudo-Mary Poppins, and that is meant in both a good and a bad way The good in that it doesn’t truly feel like just a carbon-copy knock off, especially in terms of how both movies compare to their original book counterparts, as both do greatly change the atmospheres, tones, and styles from one medium to the. The bad is obviously that Mary Poppins is fantastic, and this is just generic harmless fluff. Overall, the movie definitely isn’t special, and can be pretty annoying, pandering, and unimaginative at times, but at the end of the day, it mellows itself by the end to finish on something that is forgettable, but overall, nothing hurtful and even slightly charming when you’re in the right mood. It definitely won’t work for everybody, but it did manage to do well enough at the box office and seemed to have enough appeal with kids to make a sequel, so maybe it’s up to the viewer. See for yourself if this slightly insane nanny is one you would trust around your children.