Film Review: The Nanny Diaries
Scarlett Johansson Struggles with Lifeless Book to Movie Transfer
The Nanny Diaries is the story of a bright, middle-class college grad who isn't sure what to do with herself. Her mother pushes her toward a career in finance, but she dreams of being an anthropologist, which doesn't pay quite as well. Feeling a bit caught at the crossroads, she decides to take a break from life for a summer, and pick up some cash caring for the child of a ridiculously rich couple.
Scarlett Johansson's "Nanny" meekly avoids battle with Laura Linney's "Mrs. X."
Our nanny dubs her rich employers Mr. and Mrs. X, and her charge is Grayer. I'm moved to say that Mrs. X is a stereotypical, rich, useless, Upper-Eastside wife who, despite having no job and nothing of even trivial consequence on her calendar, nevertheless cannot squeeze five minutes into her day for her son. I want to say that. In this case, however, the idea is taken to such extremes that it becomes something of an insult to the very idea of a stereotype. Following a pattern you cannot hope to avoid predicting, Mrs. X plays top trumps "cruel, shallow, pointless ways in which I can toy with the nanny," and our nanny suffers it all, because she has fallen for little Grayer.
Married directing team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini deliver the best they can.
The married couple who also wrote the screenplay (and gave us the brilliant American Splendor in 2003) deserve a lot of credit for almost turning this into something worthwhile. The movie adds on the anthropology story, which results in an odd, but interesting framework molded over the story at large. It's better writing than what's found in the book actually. Unfortunately, the style and lack of substance clash, and nothing manages to break completely free of the original work. It's truly a disheartening effort, because there are glimpses of a meaningful movie here. Like the book, it ultimately fails to realize that badmouthing the rich, stupid, useless people of the world by way of never-ending hyperbole is itself stupid and useless.
It's hard to really judge a movie all that harshly based on its delivery of a fairly accurate representation of the source material, but it's also hard to judge it as other than what is actually playing out before our eyes. The acting is quite good all around, with even Nicholas Art turning in a nice performance as Grayer. Scarlett Johansson gives us a good effort, but it is an effort that is somewhat beneath her abilities, and she is rather miscast in any case. The character is rewritten a little too strong, and however mousy they costume her, she looks and "feels" too smart and self-confident.
All that said, there is a hope built into the thing by Berman and Pulcini's adaptation, even if it never bears fruit. Mrs. X is a movie-standard better-by-money/better-by-network/better-by-being able to describe how I'm better kind of hollow tyrant, but we can at times see through to the person very aware of, and constantly battling, her own utter meaninglessness. I suspect this is mostly the result of Laura Linney's inability to portray anything so shallow as what she's given here, and not due to the small effort built into the script.
In the end, the movie fails for exactly the same reason that the book was a disaster. Yes, it is more hyperbole than can ever be interesting, but that's not the real problem. The story strings together what ought to be amusing anecdotes about the basic culture that is "outrageously rich snobs who have no idea what to do with their money, and lead useless, extravagant, and uselessly extravagant lives." These anecdotes are meant to be amusing, and perhaps some manner of informative, because we are looking into that culture from the outside. Here's the flaw - despite this, the story is trying to be about the nanny. When the story is about the anthropologist, the thing has gone wrong.
2 out of 5 stars
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