Sequels are rarely as good as the first film, but Nanny McPhee Returns surprised me. If you are unfamiliar with Nanny McPhee then you might want to think of Disney's Mary Poppins. Nanny McPhee shows up when a family is in great need of her assistance, just like Mary Poppins. She is a disciplinarian with children and adults, just like Mary Poppins. She has lessons to teach, and when they are complete and balance has been restored to the household she must leave, also just like Mary Poppins. One of the main differences between the two characters is that Mary has a level of vanity and a certain attractiveness that Nanny McPhee does not possess (or at least not at first).
The film starts out with Mrs. Isabel Green narrating about her farm, which is both lovely and very dear to her heart. As we zoom in for a closer look, we meet her three children: Norman, Magsie, and Vincent. Mr. Green has been called away to war and has been absent for some time. The Green family is coping with his absence - or so Mrs. Green tries to tell herself. The children are screaming and fighting with one another while their mother is screaming at them to stop screaming.
The Green family will soon have guests staying with them for an unknown amount of time. Their cousins Cyril and Celia, who are about Norman and Magsie's ages, are from the city and have been sent to stay with their aunt due to bomb scares in London. All of the children will need to get the farm tidy and attend to the piglets that are going to be sold to Farmer Macreadie. Mrs. Green has had difficulty making ends meet with Mr. Green gone and the sale of the piglets will allow them to make a payment on the tractor so that they can harvest the barley to sell. All of this sounds like the perfect plan.
As Mrs. Green is on her way to work, her brother-in-law, Phil, approaches her with the plea to sign over her half of the farm to him. He implores her that the farm is too much to handle. Little does she know that Phil has gambled away the entire farm. He is desperate to get the farm before bill collectors Miss Topsey and Miss Turvey remove his kidneys. Mrs. Green has no intentions of selling her share of the farm. Phil, who is very attached to his kidneys, discovers the family's plan to sell the piglets and devises a plan to leave Isabel with no choice but to sell her half. He plans to return later than evening and dig a hole under the side of the barn where the piglets sleep and lure them out into the field to roam free.
Meanwhile, the children are trying to complete their chores and tidy up things for their cousins who are to arrive the following day. The cousins however arrive a day early and are not pleased to be in, "The Land of Poo." The Green children are in turn not pleased to have such mean, disrespectful and ungrateful houseguests. The bitterness between the two sets of kids leads to threats, chases, hitting and all other sorts of childlike violence. When Mrs. Green gets home from an exhausting day at work, she discovers that her niece and nephew have arrived early and are quarreling fiercely with her children.
Mrs. Green is stressed, tired and is about to break down into hysterics when there is a knock at the door. Standing on the stoop is an old, heavyset woman dressed completely in black with a black-feathered hat on top of a mass of dry coarse hair. She has a protruding front tooth, two large hairy moles, one on her chin and the other under her nose. Her brows start at each corner of her face and meet in the middle to create one long, bushy eyebrow. She introduces herself as Nanny McPhee and has been deployed by the army to assist the family. Mrs. Green is reluctant at first, but Nanny McPhee assures her all will be well.
Nanny enters the parlor where the combative youngsters have moved their fight and she closes the door behind her. Standing tall and speaking in a firm voice, she tells them to stop fighting and to go to bed. The children ignore her. Nanny McPhee slowly pulls her hand out from underneath her long black coat to reveal a large knobby walking cane. She firmly strikes it against the floor and sparks fly. Suddenly, if by magic, the children stop fighting with one another. They are now battling themselves. Celia is pulling her own hair, Magsie is striking her face to the floor and then pulling her face up by her hair, Cyril is putting himself in a headlock, Norman is poking himself in the eye and poor Vincent is striking all the best china with a club. They plead with Nanny McPhee to make it stop and she will, on one condition: they must apologize for hurting each other and stop fighting. They refuse and continue to beat themselves up. After a bit more of self-inflicted suffering they concede. She strikes her cane once more to the floor and the self-torture stops.
The children calmly walk up to bed in a collected manner and bid goodnight to Mrs. Green. The large dark hairy mole beneath Nanny McPhee's nose disappears. On her way upstairs to check on the children, she tells Mrs. Green that she has five lessons to teach. The first, to stop fighting, has been completed. Upstairs, Victor, Norman and Magsie are refusing to share their beds with Cyril and Celia. Nanny McPhee announces to all the kids how she works. "When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I must go." Four more lessons to go long with more magical events.
Nanny McPhee Returns is a delight. I was surprised to learn that the lead actor and Academy Award Winner, Emma Thompson, wrote the screenplays for both of the Nanny McPhee movies, which were adapted from the series of Nurse Matilda books. There are some moments that are definitely more appealing to kids (such as pigs climbing trees and then beginning to synchronize swim), but it is a lovely film overall.
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