ADAPTED FROM the best-selling novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, "The Nanny Diaries" tells the story of a young college graduate named Annie (Scarlett Johansson) who chooses, in the absence of more inspiring career opportunities, to become a nanny for an Upper East Side family.
Needless to say, this is not what her mother Judy (Donna Murphy) had in mind when she bought Annie's graduation present, a badly cut business suit of indeterminate color — green in some lights, gray in others — and consistently gloomy. A salt of the earth nurse, Judy envisioned that suit taking Annie to the top of the mysterious world of Wall Street, far out of reach of all the chores and indignities of caretaking with which she herself is so familiar.
As movie mothers go, Judy is particularly clueless, pressuring her only child relentlessly. But by the end of "The Nanny Diaries" I'd come to empathize with her only-the-best-for-my-kid point of view. The writing/directing team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are not my children, but after their last movie, the triumphantly weird "American Splendor," I only wanted the best for them as well. And somehow they ended up with "The Nanny Diaries," a horror film awkwardly disguised in the non-descript gray-green suit of a chick flick.
Annie's charge is a 4-year-old whose name is Grayer (Nicholas Reese Art), which may be the movie's best, or at least its easiest, joke. Her boss is referred to only Mrs. X (Laura Linney). Presumably the idea is, as it was with Mr. Big on "Sex and the City," that the gag makes it more fun to speculate as to who the "real" person was who inspired McLaughlin and Kraus, both former New York nannies, to turn into novelists.
Mrs. X is self-centered, insecure and perpetually exhausted by shopping, charity work and lunching.
She's a cold and emotionally uninvolved mother, whose deepest concern about Grayer seems to be that he get into the right private schools. She abuses Annie's good nature at every turn, even going so far as to ignore the girl's emergency phone calls while she's away at spa. Linney embraces Mrs. X's awfulness with the same kind of glee Meryl Streep brought to "The Devil Wears Prada," playing her as a sort of Wicked Witch of the East Side.
Early in the movie, we hear Mr. X (Paul Giamatti, who starred in "American Splendor") but don't see him — he's got his head turned, or something obscures him — and there's the expectation that the filmmakers may keep his face a secret. That could have worked, because the voice Giamatti uses for the performance is so effective. It's very soft, butter on the verge of a complete melt, and yet utterly menacing. He philanders, he disappears and he even gives Grayer a puppy and then takes it away. He's the Voldermort of the Upper East Side. With a kid.
Therein lies the problem. When Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada" was mean to her minions, we could laugh because they were all there by choice and in some sense, aspiring to be her. As a minion, Annie is fairly limp and surprisingly malleable (we keep hoping she'll stand up for the right to ask for even a Sunday off).
But freckle-faced, often glum little Grayer is not a minion. He's a most unfortunate child, trapped in a luxury apartment with parents who are convincingly unredeemable. By the time he tells Annie he loves her "the most," "The Nanny Diaries" has become a tragedy.
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Needless to say, this is not what her mother Judy (Donna Murphy) had in mind when she bought Annie's graduation present, a badly cut business suit of indeterminate color — green in some lights, gray in others — and consistently gloomy. A salt of the earth nurse, Judy envisioned that suit taking Annie to the top of the mysterious world of Wall Street, far out of reach of all the chores and indignities of caretaking with which she herself is so familiar.
As movie mothers go, Judy is particularly clueless, pressuring her only child relentlessly. But by the end of "The Nanny Diaries" I'd come to empathize with her only-the-best-for-my-kid point of view. The writing/directing team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are not my children, but after their last movie, the triumphantly weird "American Splendor," I only wanted the best for them as well. And somehow they ended up with "The Nanny Diaries," a horror film awkwardly disguised in the non-descript gray-green suit of a chick flick.
Annie's charge is a 4-year-old whose name is Grayer (Nicholas Reese Art), which may be the movie's best, or at least its easiest, joke. Her boss is referred to only Mrs. X (Laura Linney). Presumably the idea is, as it was with Mr. Big on "Sex and the City," that the gag makes it more fun to speculate as to who the "real" person was who inspired McLaughlin and Kraus, both former New York nannies, to turn into novelists.
Mrs. X is self-centered, insecure and perpetually exhausted by shopping, charity work and lunching.
She's a cold and emotionally uninvolved mother, whose deepest concern about Grayer seems to be that he get into the right private schools. She abuses Annie's good nature at every turn, even going so far as to ignore the girl's emergency phone calls while she's away at spa. Linney embraces Mrs. X's awfulness with the same kind of glee Meryl Streep brought to "The Devil Wears Prada," playing her as a sort of Wicked Witch of the East Side.
Early in the movie, we hear Mr. X (Paul Giamatti, who starred in "American Splendor") but don't see him — he's got his head turned, or something obscures him — and there's the expectation that the filmmakers may keep his face a secret. That could have worked, because the voice Giamatti uses for the performance is so effective. It's very soft, butter on the verge of a complete melt, and yet utterly menacing. He philanders, he disappears and he even gives Grayer a puppy and then takes it away. He's the Voldermort of the Upper East Side. With a kid.
Therein lies the problem. When Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada" was mean to her minions, we could laugh because they were all there by choice and in some sense, aspiring to be her. As a minion, Annie is fairly limp and surprisingly malleable (we keep hoping she'll stand up for the right to ask for even a Sunday off).
But freckle-faced, often glum little Grayer is not a minion. He's a most unfortunate child, trapped in a luxury apartment with parents who are convincingly unredeemable. By the time he tells Annie he loves her "the most," "The Nanny Diaries" has become a tragedy.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
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