La Voz

Media Credit: Photo courtsey of rottentomatoes.com Movie: Nanny McPhee Plot: Motherless children rebel against a magical nanny. Spoonfuls of sugar: Four with a dash of lemon. [Click to enlarge]

In a cute Kincaid-esque little village in Britain, there are seven motherless children out to prove that they are not lovable darlings.

After scaring off their seventeenth nanny by eating chicken masquerading as the littlest of the Browns, their father, actor Colin Firth, the town mortician, is denied any further assistance from the nanny agency.

If being a mortician were not depressing enough, wealthy Aunt Adelaide refuses to support the family any longer unless Mr. Brown marries within the month. Enter Nanny McPhee, actor Emma Thompson, of twin hairy warts, snaggle-tooth, and bilious black crepe to become another fixture in the huge, hideously decorated Victorian house the family Brown lives in.

Be warned: this is not a remake of the saccharine "Mary Poppins," complete with musical numbers -- Nanny McPhee means business, complete with the occasional spell and medicine that moves.

Colin Firth, still totally yummy, carries off his role. And he plays a devoted, distracted widower stuck in a moldy overstuffed house or cold room with old dead people paying the price of not caring about overpopulation.

However, Mr. Brown, in his flustered state, utters the phrase "good heavens" about 279 times in the 98 minutes of the movie, and detracts from the audience's pleasure of listening to his melodic British accent by muttering everything. And looking at him standing next to dead people's blemished feet isn't all that great either.

Nanny herself proves to be an imaginative disciplinarian, teacher and friend, helping the family to assume some normality and happiness.

The capers of the Brown children, despite their snobbery and disregard of sanity, are amusing and creative even as the Nanny shapes them up. Thomas Sangster (Hugh Grant's nephew) and Emma Watson highlight the children's hijinks.

The movie would not be complete without a romance. This is provided by the subtle, truly sweet crush between Mr. Brown and his scullery maid Evangeline. This unexpected heroine wins over the audience Nanny McPhee, despite all appearances, is a charming but realistic blend of "Mary Poppins" and Maria of "The Sound of Music." She has very plausible problems and worries, solved by family effort and some magic of the non-hocus pocus kind. Sorry, but this movie lacks the cavorting with chimney sweeps, running madly in meadows, and hiking cross-continent.

Perhaps one of the more clever aspects of the whole movie is that the audience's perception subtly changes as the children's does over the course of the film.

Though clearly a children's movie, Nanny McPhee's dry humor and mildly sappy sweetness will warm even the coldest heart cockles.



(Update: 2/13/06 - The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Emma Roberts appears in this film.)


This article appears in the Feb. 6, 2006 print edition of La Voz.

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