Emma Thompson

While “Nanny McPhee Returns” is suitably supercalifragilistic, it’s not quite as expialidocious as the original.

This twinkly and slightly twee follow-up to 2005’s “Nanny McPhee” leans far more heavily on high-tech, CGI magic than on the old-fashioned storybook kind that made the first film such a quaint, literate charmer. Under the direction of Susanna White, a veteran British TV director making her big-screen debut, the sequel is more sweetly sentimental and cartoonishly antic than the first.

Again, the film posits itself as an antidote to the syrupy goodness of Mary Poppins. Like Miss Poppins – but with a gnarly turnip nose, a wormlike unibrow, two whiskery facial moles and a rabbity snaggle tooth – Nanny McPhee is a British governess with a touch of magic in her pragmatic child-rearing ways.

But whereas Julie Andrews’ sprightly performance as Miss Poppins was offered up with a heaping spoonful of sugar, Emma Thompson’s sly and slightly menacing portrayal of Nanny McPhee comes with a biting spoonful of bitters.
Thompson, who again penned the screenplay inspired by mystery writer Christianna Brand’s trio of “Nurse Matilda” books, is no slouch when it comes to adapting literary material for the screen. She won an Oscar for her sterling 1995 script of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”

This time around, she moves the action to 1940s rural England, where the overwhelmed Mrs. Green (lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal with a finely honed British accent) struggles to keep the family farm afloat while her husband is away at war. Compounding her troubles are three boisterous children whose rustic country life is upended by the arrival of two snooty, spoiled city cousins evacuated from war-torn London.

Naturally, country cousins and city cousins clash amid the barnyard muck (“Greetings, oh covered-in-poo people,” sneers the Woosterish cousin Cyril upon first seeing his grimy country kin). Soon, the children are engaged in all-out war – slinging poo, soiling clothing, breaking china and generally running amuck.

Enter Nanny McPhee, unbidden and unannounced, to throw off sparks from her gnarled walking stick and impose a stern but kindly sense of order among the children.

Naturally, the youngsters resist at first, led by the big-brother earnestness of Norman (Asa Butterfield) and the snotty archness of Cyril (Eros Vlahos).

But Nanny chides them, “When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but do not need me, then I will have to go.”

Naturally, the rude youngsters are no match for Nanny McPhee, who patiently but firmly instills in them five valuable life lessons: to stop fighting, share nicely, help each other, be brave and have faith.

The film benefits greatly from impressive cameos by stellar friends-of-Emma in Britain’s theater world: Ewan MacGregor and Ralph Fiennes as the off-at-war dads; Bill Bailey as the farmer with a high regard for the intelligence of pigs, and a dottery Maggie Smith, the game grand dame who is not above lowering herself daintily onto a cow patty.

Rhys Ifans makes a fine if nattering villain of the piece as Mrs. Green’s conniving brother-in-law intent on conning her into selling the farm to pay off his overdue gambling debt.

Through it all, Thompson presides calmly over this imaginative little children’s movie with sharp intelligence and unfussy good sense. If only “Nanny McPhee Returns” had reined in its erratic energy and gone lighter on the CGI effects it might have surpassed the odd, eccentric charms of the original.

- Dennis King

“Nanny McPhee Returns”

PG
1:40
2.5 stars
Starring: Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans, Maggie Smith
(Rude humor, some language and mild thematic elements)

Jeremy Renner in a scene from "The Hurt Locker."

BY DENNIS KING

Having earned a living for a couple of decades by babbling on about movies, it is perhaps impolitic to admit that I’m not very good at guessing Oscar winners. The average popcorn Joe predicting in the average Oscar office pool probably has as good a track record at picking winners as me.

It’s not a function of movie knowledge or keen insight or anything like that. It’s just that quirky tastes in movies often lead to quirky predictions when it comes Oscar time (I’d much rather vote the low-budget underdog than the fabulous front-runner). That, and the fact that reading the tea leaves on how 6,000 or so official Oscar voters will vote (they are indeed a fractious bunch) is sheer folly.

My favorite axiom on Oscar expertise is drawn from that grand screenwriter and two-time Oscar-winner William Goldman, who famously wrote, “In Hollywood, nobody knows anything.”

Early on in my tenure as a professional “film cricket” (Homer Simpson’s term), I concocted an admittedly goofy experiment in which I tacked lists of Oscar nominees on a dart board and let fly a dart at each of the Big Six categories (supporting actor, supporting actress, actor, actress, director and best movie). Then I compared my own furrow-browed prognostications with the whims of the dart.

And the dart’s random picks were more successful than mine. D’oh!

So anyway, after that long-winded prelude, here are my best guesses at statuette winners of the 82^nd Academy Awards to be presented Sunday evening in an overstuffed ceremony airing on ABC from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

Best actress in a supporting role: Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart.” (The Academy’s actors’ branch is the largest and most politically fragmented voting body, and it’s often in supporting categories that upsets and surprises occur. But Gyllenhaal, so good in this gritty, naturalistic serio-comedy, is a popular candidate who’s compiled an impressive body of work. So it just feels like her time.)

Best actor in a supporting role: Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger.” (The movie, one of several fine meditations of late on the terrible toll of war, is perhaps too grim and little seen to attract voters. But the sometimes erratic Harrelson proves himself a serious acting force in this tightly contained yet volatile performance. It is indeed Oscar-worthy.)

Best actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side.” (Another popular – and populist – actress who is finally nominated for a role weighty and inspirational enough to attract lots of sympathetic voters. It just feels like she’s due.)

Best actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart.” (Call it the Lebowski Effect, but Bridges inhabits broken-down, psychically damaged roles like Bad Blake as if he were born on a barstool in a bowling alley. He’s another actor whose body of superb work should win him loads of popular support among fellow actors, even in a shaggy-dog movie such as this.)

Best director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker.” (All indicators – previous awards ceremonies – point to a breakthrough Oscar for Bigelow. First woman ever to win and all that. Aside from the juicy satisfaction of seeing her beat out James “King of the World” Cameron, her ex-husband with his monumental ego, Bigelow simply deserves to win for a superior piece of film storytelling – rich in detail, complex human dimension and thrumming dramatic impact.)

Best picture. “The Hurt Locker.” (With all the hoopla about expanding the best picture category to 10 nominees, in the final run it seemed to narrow down to a two-picture race between “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar.” Low-budget indie grit versus big-budget special-effects razzle-dazzle. Gut-level storytelling versus high-tech eye-candy. Art versus commerce. Perhaps setting up this David-and-Goliath dynamic will succeed in drawing in more viewers to the Oscar telecast, but if Oscars are in truth about celebrating some mythic “best” in the year’s movies, then all 10 nominees are winners. But “The Hurt Locker” should be first among equals.)