NANNY
MCPHEE (2006) |
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Starring
Emma Thompson, Colin
Firth, Kelly MacDonald, Thomas Sangster, Eliza Bennett, Jennifer Rae
Daykin, Raphaël Coleman, Sam Honywood, Holly Gibbs, Hebe Barnes, Zinnia
Barnes, Angela Lansbury, Celia Imrie, Imelda Staunton, Elizabeth
Berrington, Derek Jacobi, Patrick Barlow, Adam Godley, Claire Downes,
Phyllida Law, Freya Fumic and Eleanor McCready.
Screenplay by
Emma Thompson.
Directed by
Kirk Jones.
Distributed by Universal Pictures. 99 minutes. Rated
PG. |
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Nanny McPhee
Emma Thompson's second
screenwriting effort is certainly a world removed from her first – the
adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. That stolid and
repressed literary variation does have a basically similar bent
to this version of classic kid lit, though. This is also a supremely
British tale which is based on a published book and has a sense of propriety
and repression.
Of course, in Nanny
McPhee we add out-of-control children, magic, and a witch-like caregiver
who rules with a firm but sensitive hand. Also like Sense and
Sensibility, Thompson portrays her protagonist, a mysterious nanny with
a series of over-active warts and a single out-jutting tooth and apparent
magical powers.
She appears on the step of
a widow who is at wits' end with his spoiled, angry children. The kids
have made it their mission to destroy any nanny they come into contact with.
Their plan is thwarted by McPhee who firmly forces them to learn life
lessons by essentially torturing them with their own acts. She quickly
gains the children's trust and their love, and with this the nanny blooms on
her own, losing the hideous facade that were her face and body.
There are a few too many
cheap stunts like food fights and dancing donkeys in Nanny McPhee to
recommend it wholeheartedly, but it is a mostly very charming and magical
children's fantasy.
(1/06)
Alex
Diamond
Copyright ©2006
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: May 13, 2006. 
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Copyright ©2006
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: May 13, 2006.
|
