The Nanny Diaries

A young woman (Scarlett Johansson) recounts her experiences as a nanny for a wealthy Manhattanite family.

We see how wealth affects different aspects of life: primarily marriage, social life and parenthood. In spite of this, directors Berman and Pulcini manage to make a bland, cheesy comedy lacking in any intrigue.

Chris Evans plays Johansson’s love interest (we’ve since seen that they work well together), Laura Linney the wealthy mother and Paul Giamatti is the busy cheating businessman father. What a waste of talent! Nobody is given anything to do, they are caricatures rather than characters.

The direction is a mess, as is the structure of the film. The Nanny Diaries is almost a series of vignettes rather than a typical chick-flick, sometimes this works well but here it makes for a long, boring piece of work. Ironically this also serves to disengage its intended audience.

There’s an epidemic of missed opportunities in Hollywood. So many films tackle genuinely interesting issues yet fail spectacularly to break any new ground. The Nanny Diaries stands as a prime example of this.