#1 Cheap Nanny McPhee (Full Screen Edition) Reviews
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This movie is superb and most negative reviewers have completely missed its point. First, in general, it's best to be skeptical of any reviews that spend most of their time comparing the film to similar films the reviewer apparently liked better. Most of the negative reviews (and several of the positive ones) fall into this category. This film is neither Mary Poppins (MP) nor The Sound of Music (TSOM) to which it is oft compared, nor was it made as a "cheap knock-off" of those works (all three are derived from different source books), yet reviewers take great pains to tell us all the ways they found Nanny McPhee (NM) inferior to the others. A film should be reviewed on its own merits, which I believe are considerable.
Second, Nanny McPhee's physical appearance is crucial to understanding the richness of the story, but that point is entirely missed by most reviews. They dismiss her as "repulsive," "odd," "ugly," and "mysterious," as if those character traits are just innately wrong choices for the central character of a film. One widely read negative review condemns this decidedly different portrayal of the nanny for failing to mirror the "anything-but-ugly Julie Andrews," but then knocks the film for being "an unabashed and shameless rip-off" of the prior works. Would he have liked NM to be more similar to the other films, or less? One simply can't condemn a film's choices on the grounds that they resemble or differ from those of other films. But to condemn a film both ways simultaneously is just nonsense. Reviewers should deal with the film's story and how well the film tells it.
I found McPhee's "repulsive" look and decidedly "mysterious" behavior to be brilliant choices. The filmmakers employ them skillfully to tell THEIR story, and their story is NOT the same story found in the other films. Nanny McPhee is, among other things, a metaphor for selfless virtue and mature self-control, as seen through the eyes of virtue-less and immature children. Corrupt eyes will always initially regard virtue as stern, foreign, ugly and even "inhumane" (as one negative review opined). But as the sour medicine of choice & consequence grows a more selfless heart inside us, we come to see its true beauty. Most reviewers failed to even note this dominant theme, or how the film makes it crystal clear: as the children make better choices for better reasons, Nanny McPhee's appearance gradually changes, from disfigured hag at the beginning to beautiful governess at the end. She visually reflects the family's heart-change from villainous to virtuous, and her final radiance at the fanciful, winter-wonderland wedding seems to say that a transformed heart "makes all things new." Consider, too, that by enduring her outer ugliness, Nanny McPhee is bearing (and eventually bears away) their inner ugliness--yet another level of meaning, and there are many more. Neither Mary Poppins or Maria Von Trapp ever swam in cinematic waters this deep. Both those films are excellent, but they are very different films from Nanny McPhee.
This is a wonderfully entertaining, beautifully crafted film that believes the truest measure of maturity is our willingness to love others as we love ourselves. I think it intentionally bears a surface resemblance to the earlier works, but it does so as a tonic to its predecessors' somewhat saccharine sentimentality--a sentiment made more benign by those films' status as cultural icons. Don't get me wrong. I greatly enjoy and respect both the classic films. But Nanny McPhee is a more honest meditation on human transformation than either of them, though they share the same thematic zip code.
Nanny McPhee is not a "cheap knock-off" of the other films--far from it. It appropriates familiar references to draw us in, but then deftly embraces or defies them to tell a different story with more gravity. NM reflects MP and TSOM in the same way that a "theme and variations" might reflect a familiar tune while still standing on it's own artistically: On the surface NM resonates with the earlier films; but then it delves deeper to ponder, with far more weight and clarity, both the joy and pain of learning to rightly love others and oneself.
Ignore the negative reviews. See the movie.
Nanny McPhee (Full Screen Edition) Overview
A mysterious governess uses magic to regain control of the misbehaved children of a widowed funeral director.
Family movie night here we come!!! - femi francis-leito -
My five year old daughter and I had wonderful time viewing this movie.The values that were exemplified in this film were put forth in a funny, moving manner that still managed to teach life lessons.
We will be on the look out to purchase the next film in the series when it is released on DVD!! Family movie night here we come!!
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