Nanny McPhee Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Geez, poor Sybill Trelawney has the crappiest luck. First, Dolores Umbridge goes after the zany teacher and tries to get rid of her, and then we learn that she's been written out of the next installment, even though she plays an important part in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And now, well, now we don't even get to look forward to her in the final double installment. No big-screen goodbye for us, unless Order of the Phoenix heads back to theaters. (This is assuming the Harry Powers That Be don't recast her for the final film.)

Emma Thompson has told MTV that she's given up the Harry Potter world to make another Nanny McPhee film. It makes sense -- she wrote and starred in the first, so naturally it "means much more" to her. So, while she won't be magical with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, she will delight in magic with the tentatively titled Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang. This time around, it's one hundred years after the first film, and focuses on "The big war, and a war between these two sets of extremely different children."

I can't help but wonder -- is this why she wasn't in Half-Blood Prince too?

Considering all the women I know who love Colin Firth, I am shocked that he doesn't get more romantic leading roles. But then, maybe that is his choice? Seeing as he appears in such a diverse range of films these days, it could be that he is perfectly in control of what he wants. And apparently he wants to do the occasional movie for the kids. After making himself familiar to the tweens by showing up in What a Girl Wants and Nanny McPhee, he is now further increasing his chances of one day winning a Kid's Choice Award by signing on to The Moon Princess. Formerly titled The Little White Horse, which is the name of the book that is based upon, The Moon Princess is a live-action family-friendly fantasy about a 13-year-old girl who enters a magical world in order to put an end to an ancient curse. Firth will be playing the girl's eccentric uncle (though the IMDb lists his part as a dual role).

The Moon Princess will be directed by Hungarian-born filmmaker Gabor Csupo, who earned his cred with the kids and the studios this year with the very successful adaptation The Bridge to Terabitha, his directorial debut. If he does just as well with this similar-sounding follow-up, I bet he'll be offered a chance at a whole fantasy franchise. If it isn't that good, Csupo will probably still be okay. As a producer/co-creator of the cartoons Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys, as well as one of the original animators for The Simpsons, he isn't really that new to Hollywood. No other casting choices have been announced yet, but hopefully Terabitha's AnnaSophia Robb will be chosen as the lead since I can't think of any other 13-year-old with as much appeal or talent right now (forget Dakota Fanning who should never be cast in a fantasy film). Regardless of who else is involved, though, I'm enough interested thanks to Firth. If I could watch part of What a Girl Want because of him, I can watch anything because of him.

   • Big Momma's House 2 - In Martin Lawrence's desperate minstrel show, the comedian reprises his role as undercover FBI agent Malcolm Turner, again donning a fat suit to become the sassy, black Southern matron Big Momma. He has to stop a potentially destructive computer hacker, and the movie is broad, shameless and pandering in most every respect. Lawrence appears to assume that we automatically like him and Big Momma, and does little to endear them to us any further. Incessant mugging, weak slapstick and Teflon catchphrases fill in the many cracks of its already shaky foundation, leaving a hammy house of horrors that should have been condemned when it was still a half-baked pitch.
    • Grandma's Boy - Adam Sandler's longtime second-banana, Allen Covert, gets his shot at a lead in this stoner comedy, but despite his appealing, aw-shucks demeanor, the movie, about a 36-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates, is just irredeemably stupid. It is sad to see three lovely ladies like Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight stooping for laughs like this, though based on the fact that practically no one saw it in theaters (or will go out of their way to rent the DVD), it is a very minor tragedy.

There's a strange mix of movies in this week's roundup: three big studio flicks and one movie from a couple of big names opening on a small scale, trying to cause a lot of trouble. The quick version: Annapolis is bad, but Big Momma's House 2 is much, much worse; Nanny McPhee is at the very least alright, while Bubble is weird and possibly fascinating. For details and links, read on.

• Annapolis: Man, James Franco is really having a tough month - first Tristan & Isolde opened to resounding disinterest, and now Annapolis is being roundly panned. Virtually every review compares the film unfavorably to An Officer and a Gentleman, and the criticism rarely stops there. The New York Times' Stephen Holden calls it "a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot," and others are equally unkind, calling the movie things like "forgettable," "cobbled together," and "all clichés."

• Big Momma's House 2: In what I'm sure comes as a absolute shock to everyone who's had the pleasure of seeing a preview for Big Momma's House 2, it's not very funny. In fact, included on the New York Post's list of things that are "more amusing" than this movie are not only Fletch (you don't say), but also open heart surgery. Yeah. It's really, really bad.

• Nanny McPhee: Reviews for this one are mixed. Though most critics think it's solidly OK, a few - including our man Mick LaSalle - find it really rather wonderful. Pretty much everyone, whether they like the movie or not, praises Emma Thompson's calm in the title role, which they all describe as "the anti-Mary Poppins." (Is that a good thing? What the hell is wrong with Mary Poppins?)

• Bubble: It may not be opening wide, but Bubble is nevertheless a huge deal this week because of its multi-media release schedule. Is it worth sitting through, either in the theater, on TV, or on DVD? Well, there's some disagreement over that. Though a handful of critics find it ponderously dull (writing at CNN, Paul Clinton describes it as the equivalent of "a movie about the phone book"), many others - including Roger Ebert and our own Karina - think that it's oddly thrilling. The great thing is that, if you're sort of interested, there's no need to risk $10 to see how it is. Instead, just flip over the HDNet tonight and see what you think.

Emma Thompson won't be winning another adapted-screenplay Oscar for her sophomore script, but she has written a most enjoyable combo of familiar plots and themes for the film of Nanny McPhee. Based very, very loosely on Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books, it takes one of the most commercially trite foundations for kiddy comedies — that of the unsinkable nanny — and adds the current safe bet for family films: magic.

The result is an unnecessary but satisfying mix of light and dark comedy that should come as no surprise from Waking Ned Devine director Kirk Jones. Finally following up his loveable debut after seven years, he continues his ability to make death a pretty funny concept. Devine begins with an old man croaking suddenly after winning the lottery; McPhee tops it with six children eating a baby.