The Nanny Diaries (2007)

Directed by Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti, Chris Evans, Nicholas Art, Donna Murphy, Alicia Keys, Julie White, Nate Corddry. [PG-13]

A recent college grad (Johansson) with no idea what she wants to do with her life stumbles into becoming the live-in nanny for a rich, dysfunctional Manhattan family. This would-be high society satire ends up being closer to The Devil Wears Prada minus the Prada and plus a spoiled, obnoxious brat. The “Miranda Priestly” here is a demanding, out-of-touch mother (Linney) who can’t be bothered to spend any time with her kid (who can blame her?) even though her life seems to consist almost exclusively of shopping and chic get-togethers. Johansson’s plucky gal also meets a “Harvard hottie” (Evans) in the building, so you know where that’s going, and, well, you know where pretty much everything else is going, too. Sure, it’s lazy, formulaic, unrealistic, and manipulative, but you probably could have guessed that before the studio logo fades in the opening seconds; what’s more surprising (and frustratingly so) is how the movie keeps telling us the nanny feels bad for the kid and (sometimes) even the mom despite not a single scene, observation, dialogue exchange, or flicker of film stock providing any reason for that to be the case; the kid is just as irksome in the last act as the first, and the mom is the same remote, high-maintenance bitch from the moment she hires the nanny to the moment she fires the nanny. (The dad, however, played by Giamatti, is always a workaholic jerk who’d rather go on long business trips and boink his employees than say one word to his progeny.) Rote, glossy nonsense from a pair of filmmakers and a cast who should know better. Based on a book by the same name from Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.

32/100