BEFORE: Still not sure when I'll get my next shift at the new job - I had some trouble at home figuring out how to use Google calendar and access the shared schedule. Turns out I had more than one Google account open, and the browser was defaulting to the wrong one, and that's why I wasn't being granted access. Once I told the browser that I wanted THIS profile to access the calendar, then I was off to the races. Now I just need my available days to start lining up with more shifts, and maybe I can start making some more money.
I went into the city today to get my hearing aid checked, it was cutting out every two minutes last week, and found out it may have gotten wet inside, there was some corrosion. Makes sense, it's been a very humid month with several surprise rainstorms, incuding one that ended up in my basement, so maybe it's to be expected that the device got wet inside - I bought a small jar full of silica (or something similar) beads that I can store the hearing aid in overnight to reduce internal moisture.
Then I swung by my previous movie theater gig, to buy nachos for my wife and check in on my old crew. We all agreed it felt like a long time since we worked together, but really, it's only been three weeks. September has felt mysteriously long, but yet here we are in the fourth week of the month already, so it also somehow feels like it's almost over. After tonight just SIX more films until I reach the start of the annual horror chain. Then it's a countdown to both NY Comic-Con and Halloween. Oh, I also swung by my day-job office today, for emergency reasons, but perhaps that's a story for another time.
Kelly Macdonald carries over from "Puzzle".
THE PLOT: A governess uses magic to rein in the behavior of seven naughty children in her charge.
AFTER: Well, I've certainly been aware of this film for some time - fifteen years since this film got released, so I managed to avoid it for a good long time. So long, in fact, that I recently saw one of the actors who played a kid in this film in "The Queen's Gambit", playing a grown-up chess player and one of the love interests (sex partners) for the lead character. This always looked like maybe just a bad rip-off of "Mary Poppins", but over the years, the more I learned about the film, the more interesting it became. I still wasn't sure if it was meant as a parody of such or what, but perhaps it's more true to think of this as sort of an answer film, one character who's a reflection of the other, like the way "Brightburn" presented a character very much like Superman in origin, but very different in the ultimate result.
I had very high hopes at first, when I met the Brown family depicted here, with seven young children out of control, and a father unwilling to mete out discipline - or when he could bring himself to punish his children, he felt very guilty about doing so. Aha, I thought, these children are much like the entitled children of today, many of whom are also very out of control, and we all know that many modern parents regard this as some form of "creative outlet", when in fact it may just be complete lack of discipline. You can say what you want about the old ways, but during a time when children were somewhat afraid of their parents, it goes to reason that they were probably, in general, also better behaved. Look, I'm not saying modern children should be spanked or beaten, but for the very loud, very energetic ones, would it hurt to give that a try? I never really wanted to be that old fart who says, "Eh, kids today, they get everything they want and they don't know how to work for it, they're all just entitled bastards." Yet this is where we find ourselves, isn't it?
These seven children who have acted horribly, and driven 17 other nannies away from their house with their pranks and their bad behavior, and still their father can't seem to raise a hand to them. Considering the time frame (Victorian England?) it doesn't really track, but then as we all know, most films set in other time periods reflect more about the time in which they were MADE, so really these are meant to be modern children in a setting from 150 (?) years ago. People still rode in horse-drawn carriages, men didn't take active roles in raising or nurturing children, and there were things like dowries and marriage was a financial as well as personal arrangement. Mr. Brown seems to be doing all right as a funeral parlor director, however he's also relying on monthly payments from his late wife's aunt, and those payments are due to stop unless he gets married by the end of the month. It's a little unclear why this aunt is financially forcing him to get married, is she just anti-nanny or trying to consider what's best for the children, or does she have some other agenda? Maybe she just likes being in control?
Anyway, Nanny McPhee is suggested (by herself?) to Mr. Brown after the nanny service won't take his business any more, and I thought, "Ah, here's somebody who can teach these kids how to behave, probably, and if she's the anti-Mary Poppins, then maybe we'll see some discipline applied, maybe even a beat-down." Alas, no such luck, she's all about outsmarting the kids and using magic, which is just the same as Mary Poppins' m.o. Admittedly, it's a little different of an approach, instead of a "spoonful of sugar" to help that medicine go down, the medicine tastes nasty, and the kids have to swallow it anyway, both literally and figuratively. Well, don't pretend to be sick if you don't want to be given medicine, right? Nanny McPhee's cane seems to contain the magic (or does it?) and it can be used to set the destroyed kitchen back in order, or to make all of the kids feel sick and unable to leave their beds.
But then there's a bit of a shift, and after proving that she's smarter and more powerful than the seven kids, Nanny McPhee earns their respect - well, at least they learn to say "Please" and "Thank you," which is one of her five lessons. And each time the children learn a lesson, one of Nanny McPhee's facial aberrations disappears, either a mole or a wart, so she slowly becomes less hideous over the course of the film. This seems to be sort of an allusion to the Jewish concept of the scapegoat, the young animal that absorbs the sin of people before being sacrificed. Once she has the respect of the children, she also teaches them to put their trouble-making energy to work, solving the family's problems, namely which child should be sent to live with Aunt Adelaide, and how to deal with the fact that their father is looking for a new wife, which means they could get an "evil" stepmother, as they've seen in fairy tales.
Although the later lessons do teach the kids that their actions have consquences, and therefore they should think very carefully before taking action, the actions taken are rather disruptive, including pulling pranks during their father's courtship with Mrs. Quickly, and then of course there's the big cake fight at the wedding. This is where I think the movie loses track of the original intent, which was to teach the children to not be so naughty, and both of these scenes involve the children getting very naughty - for specific purposes, of course, but it still seems like backsliding away from the concept.
Mary Poppins would come and go "as the wind changed", while Nanny McPhee must stay when the children need her and don't want her, but has to leave when the children want her but don't need her - it's just a fancier way of saying the same thing, really.
Also starring Emma Thompson (last heard in "Dolittle"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Genius"), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (last seen in "Bright Star"), Angela Lansbury (last heard in "The Grinch"), Eliza Bennett (last seen in "From Time to Time"), Raphael Coleman, Jennifer Rae Daykin, Samuel Honywood, Holly Gibbs, Hebe Barnes, Zinnia Barnes, Celia Imrie (last seen in "The Borrrowers" (1997)), Imelda Staunton (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Derek Jacobi (last seen in "Tolkien"), Patrick Barlow, Adam Godley (last heard in "Missing Link") and the voices of Phyllida Law (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Freya Fumic,
RATING: 6 out of 10 headless dolls
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