Nanny McPhee Returns
Release Date:
August 20, 2010
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 93/123 |
David Mumpower |
More thought should be placed into how we prevent her from returning again. Suddenly, I'm all for locking down the borders before this particular alien immigrant can return. |
Nanny McPhee wouldn’t be the first time that a film’s star uglified herself for effect. (Monster, anyone?). In Charlize Theron’s case, she probably did it for the awards – Hollywood loves it when beautiful people play hideous – and, more importantly, for the challenge of playing a former prostitute turned serial killer. Nanny McPhee is no Monster, of course. Instead, for star Emma Thompson, it’s a labor of love. She not only plays the revolting 19th-century English nanny who’s just as good at attending to the needs of small children as Mrs. Doubtfire, but created the big screen role for herself as well by adapting Christianna Brand’s popular Nurse Matilda children’s books from the 1960s and ‘70s. The first movie, aptly named Nanny McPhee, was a bigger hit abroad than it was here in the States. Pic earned $122.3 million worldwide, with 38.7% of that coming from US theaters.
Here we are four years later – or five, depending on where you live – and we have yet another Nanny McPhee movie. This one’s called Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang and co-stars some impressive talent like Ralph Fiennes, Rhys Ifans and a double dose of Maggie (Gyllenhaal and Smith). In it, McPhee is thrown to a British farm during an unnamed war to care for Mrs. Green’s (Gyllenhaal) three children while her husband is off fighting for some unspoken cause. The children’s two spoiled cousins are also sent to live on the farm, boosting the number of attention seeking kids to five. Meanwhile, Mrs. Green’s brother-in-law (Ifans) gambles away the farm and leaves her with little choice but to sell her half. His desperate tactics include making it super simple for the pigs to break away from the farm by digging enormous escape holes for them.
There’s something about Nanny McPhee that is very near and dear to Emma Thompson’s heart. In fact, the actress reportedly skipped out on the final chapter of one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises (Harry Potter) so that she would have the availability to reprise her role as Nanny McPhee in the sequel.
Fortunately for Thompson, her adventures in uglihood don’t end with Big Bang. She already revealed a short time ago that she intends for Nanny McPhee to be a trilogy, matching the number of Nurse Matilda books penned by Christianna Brand. (Eric Hughes/BOP)
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