Film review: Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang

Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang. 109 minutes. Rated G. Directed by Susanna White. Written by Emma Thompson. Based on the Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand

With Nanny McPhee (2005), Emma Thompson (pictured above) captivated audiences with her delightful script and performance as the "hideously ugly" title character who restored love and meaning to the empty and dysfunctional lives of widower 'Mr Brown' (Colin Firth) and his unruly bunch of undisciplined children. And in spite of its obvious debt to the magic of Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee went on to become a world-wide smash-hit – and we longed to have Ms Thompson come to our house and read us bed-time stories in that luxuriously silky voice.

Now, with Ms Thompson again writing and starring (and, this time, producing), we have the 'sequel'. While it can only ever have failed to recapture the bewitching qualities of its predecessor, it also suffers from trying a little too hard to offer something new and different. With the exception of Thompson's wonderful recreation of the enchanting title role and a fantastic (but all to brief) synchronised swimming piglet ballet, Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang ends up being something of a disappointingly lukewarm clone.

While her husband is away fighting in World War 2, Mrs Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is left alone to tend to the family farm and care for their three children. With the arrival of the spoilt cousins (the two excellent youngsters Eros Vlahos and Rosie Taylor-Ritson) from a besieged London, and with Uncle Phil (the brilliant Rhys Ifans) trying everything he can to convince the harassed young mother to sell the farm so that he can pay off his gambling debts, it soon becomes obvious that 'the person they need is Nanny McPhee'.

Oddly, none of the collaborators from the original film were onboard for this incarnation, and the outcome is all the poorer for it. Thompson's script, even with fabulous support from James Newton Howard's dynamic score, is nowhere near as secure as the gilt-edged fairytale that made the original so enthralling. The heavily World War 2 influenced storyline lends the film an incredibly dated and contrived narrative convenience, while Production Designer Simon Elliott's lack of feature film experience lets the film's long and weary sortie into a supposedly war-torn London collapse into low-budget pastiche. Cinematographer Mike Eley struggles, and ultimately fails, to find a unique look and feel, while editor Sim Evan-Jones can't quite pull Ms White's studious account of the patchy and disjointed narrative together into a cohesive whole.

While there is no doubt that the intended audience will find much to enjoy, it's a shame that, as the film progressed, the little ones gave up on their battle with restlessness and even at only 109 minutes, it all began to seem too much like hard work.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspapers Group and an edited version of it was published in the print edition of the Midwest Times.