THE kiddie komedy of “Nanny McPhee” shows that “Mary Poppins” plus Charles Dickens can add up to less than even “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
In an England of no particular era (there is electricity, but people travel by horse-drawn carriages attended by footmen in 18th-century livery), Colin Firth plays widowed mortician Cedric Brown, whose seven out-of-control kids have driven 17 nannies bonkers.
But the children snap to when the mysterious Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson, in warthog makeup) shows up on their doorstep with her magical ways. She tells the children that when they need her but do not want her, she will be there. When they want her but no longer need her, however, she will go.
Nice touch, but why not just remake “Mary Poppins”? Maybe because Thompson, who also wrote the script (based on the “Nurse Matilda” books by Christianna Brand) is equally eager to bring in Dickens. “Dombey and Son” was about a widower who has lost touch with his kids; the two cheerful near-look-alikes who work with Cedric are like the Cheerybles from “Nicholas Nickleby,” and the wealthy but cranky aunt who dislikes boys is plainly modeled on Betsey Trotwood of “David Copperfield.”
I enjoy a cozy homage to Dickens – it beats another ripoff of “The Matrix” – but though the movie has a gentle spirit, neither the actors, whose performances are broad caricatures, nor Thompson bring any wit to it. The comedy consists of food fights, worms placed in sandwiches and animals in funny hats. If your film is for 4-year-olds, though, should you really include a discussion of incest? Or show Daddy getting electrocuted by the kids?
Nanny McPhee seems to have unlimited powers. So why is she so non-supercalifragilistic? One scene, in which the kids fake measles because they don’t want to get up, builds slowly to Nanny’s big payback: She wills them to stay in bed and drink medicine. Not much whimsy in that.
The film appears to have saved up most of its budget for a lovely, effects-filled ending carrying a whiff of “My Fair Lady,” but Nanny McPhee isn’t central to it. Maybe her failure to forge an emotional bond with the household is the point; today’s parents feel guilty enough about outsourcing their child rearing without having the wonderfulness of Mary Poppins rubbed in their noses.
—
NANNY McPHEE
[**] (Two stars)
Half a spoonful of sugar. Running time: 98 minutes. Rated PG (mildly risque humor). At the Empire, the 84th Street, the Union Square and others.