J. and I saw the movie Nanny McPhee this evening.
Don’t be so surprised, they now have English movies in the small theater in town. From what I hear, they used to have almost only English movies in the theater, but 9/11 happened and then there was a new owner and they stopped all together. These last few weeks have been a trial run and if enough people come to the movies, they’ll keep them. So, in the interest of continuing movies, we’re trying to go to them whenever possible.
Actually, since this movie was at 5:30, it still caused a bit of a problem for us, timewise, but we managed.
So the movie … well, if you don’t already know, it’s about a family with seven children who have recently lost their mother. Unfortunately, these children are as beastly as they come.
When the movie starts, nanny number 17 is running out of the house after being there for only a little over three days. When the father goes back to the agency to hire another nanny, they close their doors and send him away.
Fortunatly for him, Nanny McPhee is nearby and makes her presence known a few times before showing up at the door. From then on, McPhee controls the house and strange things happen to the children when they disobey her.
McPhee is a kind of strange mix between Mary Poppins and a humorous Harry Potter witch — the children, of course, being the Muggles in the latter case.
Although some people thought this was a children’s film, I think only older children would really understand it and then they might feel uncomfortable if they had ever been bad. I wouldn’t take A. to it at her age and probably not until she was 8 or so. But since I’ve never raised a child older than she is now, I can never be sure of myself on this.
In the end, I enjoyed it. It was lighthearted fun and fairly interesting. But I do have to say that I would like to figure out the reason for some of the strange things that happened — not the least of which is the reason for the alteration of McPhee’s appearance. Oh well, I guess they are some of life’s unanswerable questions.