FILM REVIEW Nanny Mcphee and The Big Bang

One woman, five kids and a lot of mud


Cinema
Daniel Carey

THE ‘big bang’ in ‘Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang’ doesn’t come until the closing stages of the movie, but there was almost a big bang at the beginning too. Such are the perils of trying to find one’s cinema seat at the same time as the Irish Film Classification Office certificate causes the screen to go virtually black.
That near-death experience aside, however, this sequel to the 2006 picture ‘Nanny McPhee’ turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable 109 minutes. Set in wartime rural England, it opens with harrassed Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who’s struggling to control her three children and keep a farm going while her husband is away at the front.
The arrival of two spoiled little rich kids from London causes war on the home front too. “We have come from far away – from the land of soap and indoor toilets,” the wonderfully snobbish city boy Cyril tells his country cousin Norman. “I’m in hell,” says Cyril’s sister Celia, who finds herself ‘covered in poo’ after a chase around the farmyard. “You’ll fit right in,” her brother notes dryly.
Isabel – under pressure from her debt-ridden brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans) to sell the farm – returns from a day at work to domestic chaos. Enter Nanny McPhee (screenwriter, executive producer and lead Emma Thompson), a no-nonsense army woman with ‘a face that could win the war hands down’.
You can fight the law, but the law will definitely win in this case.
One flash of her cane and the kids are prevented from fighting. Unwilling to share their beds with their cousins, the three country children (Norman, Megs and Vincent) are joined by a goat, a cow and an elephant.
The animal lunacy doesn’t end there. Piglets engage in synchronised swimming, which comes as little surprise to a local farmer (a relaxed Bill Bailey), who tells tales of hogs who can play Scrabble and count to ten in French.
There are some neat cameos, and adults who find themselves on chaperone duties might be surprised by how much they enjoy the picture. Ralph Fiennes turns up as an upper-crust army head. Lord Nelson’s statue tips his hat to Nanny McPhee. A local Dad’s Army-type takes out an instruction manual in his bid to disarm a bomb. It’s a real charmer.
Mary Poppins – the most obvious point of comparison – famously took out a measuring tape and pronounced herself ‘practically perfect in every way’. That would be over-stating things in this instance, although criticising a children’s story for its predictability rather misses the point.
Down sides? Well, the reasoning behind a motorcycle trip to London is a bit creaky, and the movie is ragged in parts. A constantly belching bird is not that amusing.  An obsession with animal waste takes a bit of getting used to, and watching the forgetful Mrs Docherty (Maggie Smith) sit in a cow-pat is a reminder that subtlety is not the film’s strong point.
For the most part, its quintessential Englishness works – a somewhat under-used Gyllenhaal belies her Stateside roots with a decent accent. That said, her announcement that ‘We’ll jolly well have a picnic’ is a little too close to Enid Blyton for comfort. Thankfully, for the most part we’re more in Roald Dahl territory.
The critical consensus is that this sequel is better than the original. I didn’t see the initial version, but there’s enough second time around to make the prospect of ‘Nanny McPhee 3’ a far from terrifying one. Like the children at its heart, you’ll grow to like her.

Nanny McPhee and the big bang
Rating 6 out of 10