Its as though Emma Thompson had a backlog of story ideas and wanted to use them all at once with NANNY MCPHEE RETURNS. The less than magical sequel to her enchanting NANNY MCPHEE is at once a story of British stiff upper lips during the Blitz, a bizarrely cartoonish tale of a gambler without the means to pay off his debt to an boldly blonde pair of collectors, a bland story of misbehaving children in need of Nanny McPhees firm hand, and a brief diversion into the Expressionist Cinema of the Weimar Republic with father and son at odds. Then there is the porcine aquatic ballet. Some of it works, some does not, yet, and this is the most peculiar part, there are some really wonderful performances set adrift in the mayhem.
Thompson herself, reprising the Nanny McPhee role is properly stern and starchy morphing from gruesome to comely as her charges learn their requisite five lessons, though her running argument with a belching crow dubbed Mr. Edelweiss is tiresome rather than piquant. Maggie Smith as the absent-minded but perky village storekeeper is a treasure, especially in this context. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Isabel, the much harried farm wife and mother, is a curly-haired butter-toffee of comforting warmth as she keeps that ci-mentioned stiff upper lip for her three kids while dad (Ewan MacGregor in cameo) is away fighting World War II. She herself is fighting her brother-in-law, Phil (Rhys Ifans playing it as broadly as the White Cliffs of Dover), a man given to loud suits, overcoiffed curls, and an unmanageable debt to a riverside casino. The debt, which threatens to rob him of his kidneys if he cant pay up, can only be settled by convincing Isabel to sell her half of the farm. Her three moppets, Norman (Elijah Wood look-alike Asa Butterfield), Megsie (Lil Woods), and tow-headed Vincent (Oscar Steer) are fighting with their city cousins, Cyril (Eros Vlahos) and Celia (Rosie Taylor-Ritson), newly sent to the farm to keep them safe from the bombs falling on London.
The city kids are snobs, obnoxious and exquisitely dressed. The country kids are rambunctious and wear suitable farm clothes. Poo jokes abound. Nanny McPhee arrives. Theres an elephant in the bed. The entire film is just about as lively as that retelling. For a flick about magic, it unspools with a shocking lack of imagination, the pedestrian direction from Susanna White causing even such whimsy as seventeen drawers full of syrup, flying pigs, and a mysterious gnarled cane of doom to all tank decisively as the story galumphs sloppily along through its many ill-advised idioms. Every iota of wonder is realized in the least fanciful, the least amusing, the least light-hearted fashion possible, relentlessly squeezing out all the charm and all the joy with a ruthlessness that is almost, but not quite, awe inspiring.
The best thing about NANNY MCPHEE RETURNS isnt that the children must only learn five lessons before she departs, 10 would have been too mind-ravaging for the audience. Rather it is, without doubt and with great gratitude on the part of the viewer, Dame Maggies deliciously eccentric turn, gamely covered in flour, or mistaking a cow patty for a cushion with exquisite aplomb, she finds her own magnificent way. The second best thing is Vlahos as Cyril, the nascent prig with an effortless sneer that he wields like a mace, and a genteel condescension that shows the poise of an adult to the manner born that will make him the go-to guy for this sort of character for the rest of his professional career. He can also go beyond the caricature written and deliver on the drama required in his confrontation with Voldemort, I mean, Ralph Fiennes in the Expressionist part of the film.
Thompson, it should be remembered, did a superb job of adapting Jane Austen for the screen, capturing the delicate comedy of 18th-century manners and the even more delicate passionate emotions that lurked beneath bodice and cravat. Here, with less challenging material, she hasnt found her footing. Its a conundrum for the ages.
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