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'The Nanny Diaries' movie review |
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Written by Robert W. Butler, MCT
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Monday, 20 August 2007 |
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THE NANNY DIARIES
2 ½ stars
Director: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
C ast: Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti, Chris Evans
Rated: PG-13 for language.
Running time: 1:30
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Before seeing "The Nanny Diaries" I'd have argued that the cute and the cutting edge are mutually exclusive.
Now I'm not so sure.
"Nanny Diaries" is based on the best-selling satirical novel by former Park Avenue nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. It was adapted and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who burst onto the scene a few years back with the excellent "American Splendor," based on Harvey Pekar's diaristic comic books.
The result may look from a distance like a nice sweet comedy. But beware the fishhooks buried in this confection.
Scarlett Johansson is Annie, a New Jersey girl just out of college who doesn't know what to do with her degree in anthropology. So she tells her hard-working single mom (Donna Murphy) that she's got a good job in high finance while in truth she has accepted a gig tending to the young son of a filthy-rich couple living on the Upper East Side.
One of the brilliant strokes in Berman and Pulcini's screenplay is that they have framed the entire movie as an anthropological field report. Annie views herself as a latter-day Margaret Meade living among exotic island inhabitants and her voiceover narration describes in academic language the wondrous and/or disturbing rituals she witnesses.
The film also dabbles in some disarmingly funny magic realism, with Annie frequently visiting an imaginary museum where life-size dioramas depict the denizens of upper Manhattan. Particularly amusing is the display devoted to Park Avenue husbands, who are shown screaming into a telephone, swinging a golf club and enjoying a strip club lap dance.
At other times Annie envisions herself as Mary Poppins, floating about the city beneath a red umbrella. The reality of her servitude, though, is much less enchanting.
For starters, little Grayer (Nicholas Art) is a hell-on-wheels brat. Not that you can blame a kid whose mom has put him on a soy-based diet.
Mom - identified only as Mrs. X - is played by the great Laura Linney, and she's both beautiful and repellant as an affected society matron who will devote hours to planning charity balls but has no time to spend with her own child. She sets the tone early on when she tells Annie never to let Grayer take a nap: "I prefer him to be tired when I get home."
Mr. X is played by "American Splendor" star Paul Giamatti, and he's positively hateful as a Wall Street shark with little but contempt for his wife and child. He has a mistress, too.
And finally there's Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans), the rich young man who lives upstairs and falls for our girl, although she puts him off for the longest time, figuring he's got to be a Mr. X in training.
The plot, such as it is, involves little Grayer falling for his new Nanny and vice versa, and how finally the hired help teaches Mrs. X some important life lessons about being a mother and what's really important in life. Oh, and Harvard Hottie turns out to be Prince Charming.
"The Nanny Diaries" lewdly flirts with bathos, which is fine as long as Berman and Pulcini are able to deflate the sentimental glop with some wicked satire. Also, Linney is so darn good she turns Mrs. X from a brittle caricature into a flesh-and-blood individual. You may want to hate her, but Linney is too skilled at revealing the insecure woman beneath the hoity-toity poses.
But in too many ways the movie is just too conventional.
Final verdict: "The Nanny Diaries" is good nasty fun when it's wielding a satiric blade. Not so much when it's making nicey-nice.
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