Susan Granger’s review of “The Nanny Diaries” (MGM/The Weinstein Company)
This film adaptation of the popular, satirical chick-lit novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krause misses so many chances to be funny.
The concept is that a working-class girl is hired to take care of a spoiled Upper East Side tot. Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson) is a bright college grad from a New Jersey suburb. Although her mom (Donna Murphy), a hard-working nurse, tries to steer her into finance, Annie’s more into anthropology, examining mothers from various cultures, depicted in dioramas at the Museum of Natural History.
Annie’s hired by a high-strung, complaining control-freak, Mrs. X (Laura Linney), who demands that her precocious five year-old, Grayer (Nicholas Reese Art) be read to from the Wall Street Journal and, on his birthday, be amused by two French mimes. Her crude, philandering husband (Paul Giamatti) prefers a lower class type of entertainment, precipitating predictable marital squabbles.
If Annie’s not generic enough, her best friend’s (Alicia Keys) downright boring. And Annie’s lying to her mother about working as a Wall Street business trainee, rather than baby-sitting a brat, is a transgression with no consequences.
Part of the appeal of the snarky novel was that its authors, presumably, had nannied for Park Avenue society matrons and snobbish celebrities, voyeuristically gobbling up gossip along the way. The shallow, formulaic script, written and directed by Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Burton (“American Splendor” collaborators), has none of that pretense.
Bless her, Laura Linney does a valiant job within the trivial caricature, but Scarlett Johansson’s appeal only seems to surface only for Woody Allen. Here, she’s sullen, soft and sultry, attributes that undermine her role. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Nanny Diaries” is a banal, disappointing 3, making ‘perfection’ look pretty bleak.
