The Nanny Diaries (DVD-Video)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C Film: C
When The Nanny Diaries was announced as a
film, many had high hopes for it critically and commercially, especially
because the book had a reputation as a gossipy good read. When The Weinstein Brothers took on the
project, then cast Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti, Alicia Keys
and on the rise Chris Evans in the film, fireworks were guaranteed. So what went wrong?
Co-directors/adaptors
Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman took the book as just a series of
vignettes and decides instead to do a one-joke comedy starting with the
condescending (and potentially racist) bit about how “tribes” and “people” of
the past raised their children (including a bit about Africa and it taking a
village, which could be taken as an inadvertent swipe at liberal ideas, writers
and even Hillary Rodham Clinton, intended or not) from a museum (!!!) ending up
with the last exhibit being white yuppies hiring nannies to do it all for them.
From
there, it is one joke after the same one joke about how snobby and
condescending the rich women who hire them are, how idiotic lower-class women
who get hired supposedly are and the potential romance between Johansson and
Evans so oddball that it seems anachronistic to the rest of this mess that
neither of them can save it. All in all,
it is one o the year’s big missteps only saved slightly by a likable cast
trying to deliver.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image looks a bit dull at times despite a
consistent look to it, not very memorable.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is a bit better, with some good surrounds
and clear-enough dialogue recording.
Extras include bloopers, trailer, interviews with the authors of the
book and a making of featurette.
- Nicholas Sheffo
