Emma Thompson is a marvel! Once again she has proved herself an adept screenwriter, story adapter and actress all rolled into one. This time she brings her talents to bear on the hilarious and charming fairy-tale Nanny McPhee.

Elements of Nanny McPhee will definitely bring to mind another famous magical English nanny, Mary Poppins. And while Poppins may have pride of place in the children's movie canon, I'm not sure that in the end I didn't enjoy Nanny McPhee even more.

Directed by Kirk Jones, Nanny McPhee gives us a classical fairy-tale with some hilariously amusing twists. A family of seven children ("a family with seven children!? what's so fearsome about that?" whoops, sorry, that's another Julie Andrews film) is struggling in the wake of their mother's death. Their somewhat hapless father, played by the famously good-looking Colin Firth, seems completely lost without his beloved wife. He still speaks to her empty chair in his study by the fire, but he can't seem to bring himself to connect to the children the way he used to. In part, it's because he's lonely and tired: tired from his work at the local funeral parlor, and because he's having a hard time keeping body and soul together. He's under enormous pressure from his wife's horrid Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury) to remarry within a month or she will cut off the financial assistance she's been providing to the family.

To make matters worse, he cannot keep a nanny. The kids, obviously missing their mother terribly, have grown out of control. Led by the oldest and angriest, Simon (portrayed both movingly and comically by young Thomas Sangster) they've made it their special goal to drive every nanny out of the house faster than the one before. Some of their schemes are mischievously diabolical. When our story opens, they've just driven one of the supposedly best nannies in town off her rocker and out of their house. While Simon, grimly satisfied, places another nanny doll on the getting-rid-of-nanny chart they keep in the closet, his poor father, Mr. Brown, is finding the nanny agency closed to him forever. "No more nannies!" screeches a voice from within.

Ah, but there is one more nanny, as he shortly discovers. A mysterious voice keeps telling him that the person you need is Nanny McPhee. He has no idea who that is or where the voice comes from, but he's too relieved to turn the Nanny away when she shows up one dark and stormy night, despite the fact that she looks...well...like a classic fairy-tale witch.

Nanny McPhee's coming turns around everything for everyone in the house: the children, the father, even the frazzled and stressed out cook (Imelda Staunton) and the sweet and simple scullery maid, Evangeline (Kelly Macdonald). Evangeline loves the children tenderly and clearly harbors real tenderness for the oblivious Mr. Brown. She's also taking reading lessons from the oldest daughter, Lily, and struggling mightily to work her way through a fairy-story, though she reads so slowly it seems she'll never get to the happy ending.

Evangeline's unfinished fairy-tale mirrors the story she's living in, the one we're watching. For the Brown family's road from chaos to calm and from sadness to happiness is as bumpy as Nanny McPhee's nose (and believe me, that's saying something). We do get there in the end, but it takes some doing. In the end, even Nanny McPhee herself is transformed, nose and all, into someone beautiful...or is it our perceptions that are changing? The movie teases us with that possibility.

If the road to the happy ending is bumpy, it's because Nanny McPhee doesn't use her magic (and she clearly CAN do magic) haphazardly. She will not interfere in "affairs of the heart" as she calls them, but she will teach lessons and help the children learn to help themselves. Although her magic, usually performed by the pounding of her crooked walking stick, comes in mighty handy, it's ultimately the ordinary magic of everyday loving kindness and the children's own resourcefulness that saves the day.

Emma Thompson (who both stars as the title character and wrote the screenplay, adapting the story from the "Nurse Matilda" books of the 1960s) looks horrid as Nanny McPhee. The make-up artists did an amazing job turning her from beautiful woman to frightening hag. Her bulbous purplish nose, warty face, and one long snaggle tooth make her look pretty scary, though her piercing looks and sanguine nods are what really puts the character over the top. She has an unnerving way of materializing and then saying very severely "I DID knock" when the person in the room appears startled. It's a wonderful running gag in part because the audience never hears her knock either.

Colin Firth brings great comic sensibility to the role of Mr. Brown. He's vulnerable and poignant in the scenes where he still talks with his late wife, and in the later scenes with his children, but hysterically funny in the scenes where he's trying to woo a local widow and ward off his children's attempts to drive her away all at the same time. The fact that Mrs. Quickly (yes, it's true, poor Mr. Brown thinks he has to marry Quickly!) the widow in question, is a loon and a buffoon makes the scene even funnier, and Firth uses every ounce of physical humour he can to put the scene completely over the top.

If I keep saying "over the top" it's because it's such an apt description for this very funny movie. There's much here that children will delight in and laugh over. I ought to know, because I saw it in a theater with two full rows of six and seven year olds attending a birthday party and they seemed to think it uproarious. I think six or seven is about as young as I'd go in deciding what age child should see this movie, as some of the more offbeat humour and Nanny McPhee herself might frighten a younger child. Adults will enjoy the film enormously too. Hey, any movie where both the great Angela Lansbury and the amazing Derek Jacobi get cream cakes in the face is one that's going to make you laugh!

Perhaps the most marvelous trait this film has, besides it's willingness to draw big pictures and have fun, is its fairy-tale sensibility. It stays true to fairy-tale conventions throughout, and that's nowhere more true than the ending which is so happy that it almost made my face hurt from smiling. You have to see it yourself to understand what I mean. If you've ever longed to become a princess (or fall in love with one), if you've ever enjoyed the phrase "happily ever after," or if you think you would be surprised and delighted by a snowfall in August, then the magical Nanny McPhee is indeed the person...and the film...you need.

~~befus, 2006







Recommended: Yes