The cinematography is competent, even pretty, and one of the actors, Stephen O'Reilly, has triumphed over the abysmal script and clunk-ridden direction to actually be an endearing screen presence. It's quite an achievement. I have rarely seen a film which has got everything so wrong. The film begins as though it is a 'fun' anthroplogical study of the customs of the extremely rich. This sequence is heavily laboured and expensively produced. Then we're supposed to believe that our heroine Annie, at her first ever job interview, is so shocked by the question of who she is, that she has an existential crisis. As a result of a chance meeting with a charmless pre-school brat, and his egocentric, anorectic mom, she decides to become a nanny for one of the vilest couples in Manhattan, who treat her like dirt. Although she is under no particular pressure to stay with these morally handicapped tyrants, she does, because of the brat. Nothing and no-one is convincing or funny, except for Mr O'Reilly, who has genuine charm. And I'm not a relative, just a punter, happy for a moment of truth in a vortex of misguided Hollywood madness.
Review of The Nanny Diaries
