| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
[Nanny McPhee Returns]
A rural, heritage vision of England that goes down well in the United States but seems as oddly false and anachronistic to the English as red Routemaster London buses, red telephone boxes and friendly Bobbies wearing Keystone Cops police helmets.
More seriously though, this movie represents a White desire to hark back to a time when White culture was allegedly homogeneous and the British Empire a supposed force for good - at least in the fantasy-world of increasingly-common movies like this.
The visible-by-not-being-mentioned Racewar characteristics of this movie are hinted at through its explicit Classwar premiss of a White culture that only feels classlessly united when at war - in this case against Hitler. This is an oddly-closed world where even the adults remain childish for fear of an outside world gone apparently mad. The film has no real story to speak of and even the rather obvious Bambi- & ET-style story of absent fathers at war and children raised by lone parents is given too-short dramaturgical shrift. The uncared-for children of the rich tells us nothing about the relationship between wealth and sharing relationships. And, worse, the implied ancestor worship does not favor the older characters as founts of wisdom for the children as clearly intended.
The child performers are excellent but the script does not really get into the world of a child as the kids here speak a cold collation of Americanized inappropriate aggression and hints at adult knowing beyond their years. That the jokes are weak is compensated-for by the compelling performances of the adults. This is all good fecal fun but relies too much on CGI wizardry for its emotional affects rather than genuine inspiration, a true depth of imagination and - most important of all - enough human agency.
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