The Nanny Diaries (2007) - Johansson and co-stars elevate Berman & Pulcini fluff

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Scarlett Johansson and a boy look wronged, wearing party hats, on this cute poster for Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini's The Nanny Diaries

Annie is a newly minted bachelor student with New York at her feet, but the possibilities prove too overwhelming, and so she takes on a year as a nanny for a well-off Upper East Side family. And who does she meet in their building but a charming young fella...

 

The Nanny Diaries is written and directed by married master New-Yorker filmmakers Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini (American Splendor (2003)), whose 2nd film it is. It is an adaptation of the same-titled 2002 novel by Emma McLaughlin (The First Affair (2013)) and Nicola Kraus (Over You (2012)).

Basically too cutesy, The Nanny Diaries also wears the leg iron that our deeply privileged white protagonist's challenge in the film is her well-paid job for the rich New York family. - Hardly 'about life at the top, as seen from the bottom', as the tag-line above suggests.

The plot is served as soft sweetness and a pronounced women's picture. It is nevertheless salvaged by Scarlett Johansson's (The Avengers (2012)) own personal sweetness, a wonderful boy (Nicholas Art (Knight and Day (2010))) as her charge, who manages to be both a pain in the ass and lovable; and Laura Linney (The Details (2011)) and Paul Giamatti (The Last Station (2009)) as the fairly intolerable parents. There's excessive use of voice-over but pretty shots of New York here. The Nanny Diaries is not a great film, but it is highly pleasing company.

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Watch a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 20 mil. $

Box office: 47.8 mil. $

= Minor flop (returned 2.39 times its cost)

[The Nanny Diaries was released 24 August (North America) and runs 106 minutes. Shooting took place from April 2006 - ? in New York, New Jersey and Toronto, Ontario. The film opened #6 to a 7.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it since declined, grossing 25.9 mil. $ (54.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 3.5 mil. $ (7.3 %) and South Korea with 3.4 mil. $ (7.1 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. The-Numbers.com estimate that the film made an additional 38.4 mil. $ on the home video market. Berman & Pulcini returned with The Extra Man (2010). Johansson returned in Will.i.am: Yes We Can (2008, music video) and theatrically in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). The Nanny Diaries is rotten at 34 % with a 5.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Nanny Diaries?