"Nanny McPhee" begins by showing a group of cheerfully horrible siblings who wreck their house, terrorize the cook, and quickly drive away every nanny their absent father (Colin Firth) hires. He keeps hearing a disembodied voice telling him that "The person you need is Nanny McPhee." We presume that if he hires this otherworldly woman, the kids will learn proper behavior, and possibly he will learn proper parenting. It was at this point that I smiled. The setup seemed nearly perfect, promising a fun, quirky kid's movie.<br /><br />But even then, I had some nagging doubts. There was just a bit too much buildup. I realized that the film would have to work hard to make this character live up to expectations. Her entrance is greeted with a thunderstorm, her silhouette possibly intended as a visual allusion to Alfred Hitchcock's famous portly figure. Then we see her warty, bucktoothed face as she enters the mansion and goes to the kitchen where the kids are presently making a big mess. They're just about ready to treat her the same way they've treated all the previous nannies, but then she strikes her walking stick to the ground, and....<br /><br />Well, I won't give away precisely what spells she casts to protect herself from the children's wrath and keep them under control. I'm not out to ruin anyone's fun, what little of it can be found in this film. To understand what went wrong, we need only look back to "Mary Poppins," the most obvious inspiration for this film. One of the special qualities of Julie Andrews' Oscar-winning performance is that she played the character as if she didn't need magical powers to handle the kids. The magic served the same role as it does in most good children's fantasies--to inspire the children's imagination. When that film wanted to make points about parenting, it promptly returned to the real world, where it belonged. In "Nanny McPhee," on the other hand, the magic is simply wishful thinking, an implicit admission by the filmmakers that in the real world they would have no idea how to deal with kids like these except through brute force.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the father is trying to court a rich bitch so that he won't be disinherited by an aunt (Angela Lansbury). The movie wants us to believe that the woman he really ought to marry is his young scullery maid (Kelly MacDonald) even though the chemistry between the two is somewhat less than bristling. The subplot in which the kids attempt to sabotage the father's plans mixes uneasily with the magical material. There is a scene involving a dancing donkey that the aunt is too visually impaired to notice. Yet the father is also standing there and acts as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened!<br /><br />Eventually, the movie resorts to unoriginal slapstick. If you think that kids might like this film, I should mention that the children I was with seemed bored much of the time. The story starts from an adult perspective, and it never bothers to create a sense of wonder in the magical events. Although it tries to have fun with the nanny's powers, it's a bit too pedantic to succeed.<br /><br />Emma Thompson plays the title character with considerable skill, but it's a thankless role. She seems weary and fatigued, not relishing the task at hand. She never shows any affection for the kids, not even tough love, and they don't really come to like her. Their growing appreciation for her is strictly utilitarian, as they find her powers useful in helping them out of sticky situations.<br /><br />The conceit is that the warts and blemishes gradually disappear from Thompson's face as she completes her work on the children, and she will look normal and attractive at the end. We can only guess that she's been the subject of some supernatural curse in the tradition of "Beauty and the Beast." I assume that the book on which the movie is based provides some background on the character, but curiously the film never does: we never learn a thing about where she came from or where she'll go when she's done with the kids.<br /><br />The movie has one great line, when Thompson explains to the children, "When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go." Since the film never develops a convincing bond between her and the family, much less shows how she is able to transform them, the line only serves as a frustrating reminder of what this movie could have been if it had lived up to its promising setup.