Where is it playing?: Santa Maria 10, Movies Lompoc
What's it rated?: PG
What's it worth?: $7.00
(Brent)
What's it worth?: $8.00
(Roberta)
Poor Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal); with her husband off fighting in World War II, she must tend the family farm and raise their three spirited children by herself. Then her niece and nephew arrive from London and immediately begin quarreling with the farm children. Help arrives in the form of the grotesque-looking, magical Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson, who also wrote the screenplay).
Brent: Nanny McPhee is sort of like Mary Poppins as she might be re-imagined by Roald Dahl. Like The Chronicles of Narnia, Return to Neverland, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks before it, this film takes place in England during World War II, when children from London were sent out to the countryside to be safe from bombing. Having just come from the cinema, I’m writing this review in a British accent.
Roberta: I’m also writing in a British accent, but mine is nowhere near as good. (Some may think it sounds more New York.)
Brent: Every imaginable cliché is trotted out here: saving the farm, a villainous brother-in-law, etc. Be prepared to hear, “If we don’t get the piglets back, Farmer MacReadie can’t buy them, and we won’t have the money to pay for the tractor, and we won’t be able to bring in the harvest, and we’ll lose the farm” explained for you several times, just in case you’ve forgotten.
Roberta: Somehow, it didn’t bother me that they explained it several times. I was enjoying the movie and easily accepted that this was for other people’s benefit.
Brent: The beginning felt like a battle between old-fashioned family film charm and modern-family film bombast, though the latter may just be to establish why Nanny McPhee is so needed. Since the film is set on a farm, you can, of course, expect a bit of juvenile gross-out humor. Poo erupts from a cow.
Roberta: Okay, this I didn’t like. However, I did hear laughing from the children in the theater.
Brent: Then there’s Mr. Edelweiss, a bird who has a nasty habit of eating “window paste,” which gives him the “collywobbles”—i.e. a burp-based running gag that continues even into the end credits. Meanwhile, poor Maggie Smith, playing a befuddled old woman, is made to sit in a cow pie (“It looks so comfy,” she comments).
Roberta: I felt that if they had to use another poop joke, they should have stopped with her almost sitting on it ... but they actually let her sit down on it. Again, there was some laughter, but it wasn’t coming from me.
Brent: City cousin Cyril (Eros Vlahos) has some lines about the farm being “the Land of Poo,” but they’re actually quite funny due to his sneering delivery. What this film has going for it is the same thing that makes the difference between most good and bad family films: sincerity. Sometimes it gets a tad lost amid the slapstick and CGI, but it’s there. When one of the kids gets enchanted by McPhee and is afraid he might accidentally destroy a bundle of letters from his father, there’s a real urgency to the situation.
Roberta: I found myself almost crying a few times. It’s touching how the family bonds with Nanny McPhee. I always like Emma Thompson, and she comes through again here. Her performance is so heartfelt that her character starts to look beautiful in spite of her makeup to the contrary. Nanny is very endearing. She really wants to help this family.
Brent: Thompson can get a laugh with a simple, low-keyed expression. I remember her playing the ravishing Beatrice in Kenneth Branaugh’s Much Ado About Nothing, so it’s amusing to see her looking like this. Despite the cow pie incident, Smith is as endearing as ever, and it was fun to see her and Thompson together, since, as a Harry Potter fan, I know them as Prof. McGonagall and Prof. Trelawney, respectively.
Roberta: All of the child actors are brilliant.
Brent: Oscar Steer, the littlest kid, particularly seems as if he might have been transported directly from a 1960s Disney family film. (This is a good thing for me; I grew up watching those movies). Asa Butterfield is also strong as the eldest brother who can “feel it in his bones” that his father’s alive.
Roberta: The mother of the farm children, Isabel Green, is played beautifully by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Isabel is a wonderful, caring person, and you really want things to work out for her. You especially want her husband to return from the war and be reunited with his family. Rhys Ifans does a great job as the brother-in-law who’s up to no good, and it’s fun watching his silly antics. The old soldier, played by Sam Kelly, is a fun character and the perfect sidekick to Smith’s character. It gets a little silly at times, but it’s still endearing.
Brent: Toward the end of the film, there’s some padding in the form of an added complication after the climax of the main plotline, followed by a few moments of superfluous CGI spectacle.
Roberta: I didn’t see the first Nanny McPhee movie. I almost didn’t want to watch this one, but after seeing it, I’m delighted that I did. I came out of the theater as happy as the children who saw it.
Brent M. Parker is a writer, artist, and aspiring animated filmmaker. Roberta Slutske is his proud mother who taught him everything he knows. Contact them at mail@santamariasun.com.
