by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
Grade: C Rated PG13 104 min.
Based on the New York Times bestseller of the same name, The Nanny Diaries is a satirical look at upper class Manhattan society as seen through the eyes of a young nanny. Having never read the book, I can’t say where the film veers from the source material, but I will guess that given the popularity of Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus’ novel, something, somewhere went wrong.
Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson) is a recent college grad who has dreams of being an anthropologist. Her mother (Donna Murphy), however, wants her daughter to be successful as well as happy and pushes her into a career in business. Torn between her love for anthropology and her mother’s expectations, Annie relents and begins seeking a high powered job in New York. After a particularly disastrous interview, Annie finds herself in Central Park wondering who she really is and questioning her fate. Suddenly fate finds her when she meets young Grayer (Nicholas Art) and his high-society Mom, known only as Mrs. X (Laura Linney) to protect the not-so-innocent.
A misunderstanding leads Mrs. X to believe that Annie is an out of work nanny and she practically hires the protesting Annie on the spot despite her lack of experience with children. Ignoring the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, Annie accepts to job, thinking the foray in childcare will give her time to figure out what she really wants to do with her life. She soon gets a real lesson in humanity and human behavior when she moves into the X home and begins taking care of her attention-seeking charge. Mr. X (Paul Giamatti) is the ultimate absentee dad, spending all of his time at work and with mistresses. Mrs. X is completely self-absorbed and dismissive of her husband’s behavior, spending her days drowning her sorrows in shopping sprees and burying herself in charity work. Both parents seem to see Grayer as an accessory and Annie soon wonders what in the world she got herself into.
Of course, no chick-flick would be complete without a first-class love interest. In The Nanny Diaries, sparks fly between Annie and the guy upstairs, known as the Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans). While a romantic interlude with the flirty neighbor may indeed by just what Annie needs, she keeps her distance, knowing that Mrs. X frowns on dating and fired the last nanny for the infraction. Obviously, this doesn’t last long. I have no idea how this subplot is handled in the book, but here it almost seems like an afterthought. Both actors did fine with the lines and delivery, but the chemistry just isn’t there. Thankfully, the couple’s moments together on screen are brief, almost completely sparing the audience their lackluster romance.
Like The Devil Wears Prada, many of the more amusing parts of The Nanny Diaries come from the outrageous expectations of the villain, in this case Mrs. X, and the utter disbelief of the protagonist. They simply don’t go far enough here. Sure, this hoity-toity mom is infuriating, but because she’s not as evil as Meryl Streep’s Oscar-nominated character, the laughs are merely mild chuckles and are too few and far between to count. The culture clash provides a giggle or two, particularly when the audience witnesses the ridiculous parties Annie and Grayer are forced to attend while the rich folk schmooze it up elsewhere, but because it’s one wacky activity after another with little substance in between, the film drags at a snail’s pace with little relief.
Luckily, sprinkled throughout The Nanny Diaries are imaginative fantasy sequences. For example, the film opens with Annie taking the audience on a tour of a natural history museum that consists of dioramas of high-society Moms and Dads in their natural habitats (ie. department stores and spas for Moms and Wall Street and strip clubs for Dads) and the nannies that raise the children in their stead. Later, as she imagines what it would be like to discard her job search and become a nanny, Annie floats away from a mob of robotic businessmen on a Citi-Group umbrella ala Mary Poppins to a remixed version of “Chim-Chim-Cheree” (which pops up again later as her ringtone). These scenes are a welcome addition to an otherwise by-the-numbers chick flick. It doesn’t completely save the show, but they at least make it tolerable and break some of the monotony.
The Nanny Diaries is a sweet film, one you can take your mom or grandmother to during a girl’s night out, but it’s not much more than that. The acting is fine all around, but the story just doesn’t seem to lend itself to the screen very well. Perhaps Annie’s tales from Nannyland are better told in the novel. In any event, those curious about this tepid comedy will probably be better off saving a few bucks and renting it at Blockbuster in a few months.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
