The Nanny Diaries
I must have been living under a rock because I had never heard of Nicola Kraus or Emma McLaughlin. That meant, of course, that I had also never heard of their novel, “The Nanny Diaries.” This novel, from 2002, was apparently a huge bestseller and satirized upper class Manhattan society as seen through the eyes of the nannies and caregivers of that world. With McLaughlin and Kraus as former nannies, the novel probably contained a good deal of insightful humour into the profession and the interactions between the nannies and the upper crust of New York society life. Naturally, then, Hollywood made it into a film.
The Nanny Diaries is a 2007 comedy-drama based on the aforementioned novel. The film was directed by the team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who were behind the 2003 film American Splendor. Pulcini and Berman, before American Splendor, were acclaimed documentary filmmakers. The Nanny Diaries is their second feature film.
The Nanny Diaries stars Scarlett Johansson as Annie Braddock, a recent college graduate of anthropology who is very interested in studying other cultures. After a chance encounter in which Annie is believed to be a nanny – don’t ask me how that happens – she takes a job as a nanny and hides this deplorable occupational error from her mother, who imagined her daughter to venture directly into a “real career.” Annie becomes employed by Mr. X (Paul Giamatti) and Mrs. X (Laura Linney), a family of wealthy socialites from the Upper East Side. They have an adorable but ignored little boy, Grayer (Nicholas Art). Annie “falls in love” with Grayer instantly and her little foray into the cultural exploration of the Upper East Side life via nanny turns into something deeper. Also, there’s a love interest tossed in on the side (Chris Evans). His name is, I kid you not, Harvard Hottie (well, sort of). So yeah.
There are a lot of problems with The Nanny Diaries, the first of which is an utter lack of compelling and engaging characters. The film flounders about from situation to situation, attempting to highlight satirical elements of Upper East Side life but instead actually making the whole situation seem rather sad. The Nanny Diaries, because of its strange characterizations, seems rather more like a bleak melodrama in which we want to rescue Grayer from these terrible people. It’s not really a comedy. The performances do little to change the tide here, as the novel’s attempts at satire contain more spunk than the lacklustre performers in this film could ever attempt to convey.
Another problem within The Nanny Diaries was the nature in which they convey the occupation of the nanny. Instead of impressing upon audiences the role of the nanny as being important, the film impresses the idea of the role of the nanny as being important only if a complete outsider with other, “higher” aspirations fulfills the role. Watching the film led to me to this realization, as any other nanny in the film is ridiculously over-the-top ethnic and incompetent. Only Johansson’s Annie has the ability to change the hearts and minds of the crusty Upper East Side while everyone else who actually IS a nanny has no ability to accomplish such loft goals. Then, like a talk show host masquerading in a fat suit to change the hearts and minds of the skinny, Annie’s off back to her regular more fulfilling life having taught a valuable lesson to Mrs. X. Bravo!
The marketing for this film was often confusing, which led to what seemed to be some confusion about the final product, even from the directors and performers. The Nanny Diaries is too damn bleak to be a comedy, but too damn flighty to be a drama. Instead, we focus on various things throughout the film and wander to and fro between socialites and regular people (regular people in films are never really regular, are they?). We waft around through Mr. X and his affairs and how they affect little Grayer, yet we’re given no real reason to care for Grayer other than that he’s a kid. The relationship between Annie and any other character is redundant and tepid, leaving nothing to hold on to in a land of bland characters and weak dialogue. It’s no wonder that FOX reviewers found this film “intelligent.” Ouch. Burn.
All in all, The Nanny Diaries isn’t particularly offensive or awful, but it’s not particularly entertaining or enlightening either. It’s a pretty poor film by most standards. Johansson is, once again, nice to look at but rather uninteresting in her own performance. Linney has never been anyone I’ve cared about in film and Giamatti continues his rush to downgrade himself from past glory with a waste of time role in this one. The Nanny Diaries is a pretty poor comedy and a pretty poor drama, with no designs on either genre and no realization of the satire that the book contains.
Trailer:
