The Nanny Diaries

The Nanny Diaries DVD
Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Chris Evans
Directed by
The Weinstein Company 2007
104 minutes

I am a guy so I cannot believe I absolutely enjoyed this chick flick comedy. The Nanny Diaries is the big screen / DVD adaptation of the hit novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. I did not read the book, never will, so I have no idea how good an adaptation this movie is.

What I do know is The Nanny Diaries is a very smart, quite funny, tad wee bit caustic in its humor, quite touching, and visually amazing movie.

The Nanny Diaries doesn’t waste much time telling its story, already a plus for a comedy, so right from the beginning you know Annie Braddock is a very smart but very and, rather literally, down to earth girl.

Freshly armed with a business degree, Annie (Scarlett Johansson) looks for a job but it is her minor in sociology that ends up being most useful to her: fated to be a nanny for a while Annie creates a funny as all get out and biting case study of the Upper East Side socialite mom (Laura Linney) and the world she operates in. Oh, yeah, this is a chick flick so there’s a cute guy involved.

There are many really original and funny moments in The Nanny Diaries DVD. My favorite has to be the scene after Annie’s interview at Goldman Sachs that mixes the natural history museum dioramas at the opening of the movie with a Manhattan Guide Book.

Some of the humor here is subtle and some of it is over the top and the movie balances this quite well.

One of the many things I appreciated in The Nanny Diaries is directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are aware this is a movie.

While a lot of directors believe making a movie is just a question of pointing a camera and filming s#!t, these two believe in the expression “movie magic” and adroitly and imaginatively use every tool in the box to make something that is as fun for the eyes as the movie itself is.

For example, no movie titled Nanny Diaries could avoid a reference to the all-time nanny classic Mary Poppins and Berman and Pulcini’s is right on the money.

I really hate it when DVDs force feed you previews and other assorted garbage before getting to the menu. This one time, however, the opening public service commercial is really worth sitting through.

I am not impressed with the fact the bloopers are “Presented by L’Oreal” as there is already way too much product placement in the movies as it is:  they should leave DVDs alone.

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