Nanny McPhee

The film opens with a nanny fleeing in terror from a chaotic household; she's the latest in a series of caretakers victimized by seven naughty children acting out after their mother's death. Their father Colin Firth, a weak-willed mortician, has already run through 17 nannies, few of whom lasted more than a day. He needs a miracle to bring his kids into line, and one arrives in the gnarled form of Emma Thompson, a witch-like governess with hideous features, including a pair of hairy moles, a unibrow, a tooth hanging over her bottom lip, and a nose on loan from Karl Malden. With her magic walking stick, Thompson instills discipline by way of irony: For example, when the kids feign sickness in order to stay in bed, she gives them the measles and makes it physically impossible for them to leave their beds. Meanwhile, Firth has a month to find an acceptable wife, or else his benefactor (Angela Lansbury) will cut off his allowance and send the family to ruin.

The sinister impulses of Roald Dahl have a clear influence on Nanny McPhee, but director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Divine) consistently confuses garish for dark, which takes away much of the nanny's edge. Nicolas Roeg's superior adaptation of Dahl's The Witches employs a baroque style that heightens the intensity and menace without going over the top. Nanny McPhee falls back on the Nickelodeon principle "If all else fails, hit 'em with a retina-searing overload of visual and aural information." Perhaps tykes have the energy to process it all, but other systems are destined to eventually shut down.