Did We Need Another "Nanny McPhee"?

The first "Nanny McPhee," which came out in 2005, almost felt like a throwback to the children's movies of the 80s and 90s. It was a smaller film, free of excessive CGI, toilet humor, and featured children facing problems grown-ups might find insurmountable. There were some sillier touches, like food fights and garish costuming, but not so much that they overwhelmed the story's oddball charms. "Nanny McPhee Returns," on the other hand, falls prey to many of the traps the original successfully avoided.

Emma Thompson returns as Nanny McPhee, the world's homeliest nanny, this time to the farm of Mrs. Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her three children Norman (Asa Butterfield), Megsie (Lil Woods) and Vincent (Oscar Steer). The father is away at war and hasn't written in a long time, money is so tight Mrs. Green might not be able to make the tractor payments, and their debt-ridden Uncle Phil (Rhys Ifans) is determined to sell the farm from under them. To add to the chaos, the Greens' snooty city cousins, Cyril (Eros Vlahos) and Celia (Rosie Taylor-Ritson), are sent by their parents to stay at the farm for an indeterminate period of time. The children hate each other immediately, resulting in predictable rounds of fistfighting and hair-pulling.

When Nanny McPhee shows up at their door, explaining to the frazzled Mrs. Green that she's been sent by the army, the movie falls back on the familiar formula. Nanny and her magic walking stick turn the children's misbehavior against themselves, and every time they learn one of her lessons, she looks less and less grotesque. The children actually learn to get along fairly quickly, so the bulk of the movie's running time is spent dealing with subplots like Uncle Phil's scheming and an impromptu trip to London. The plot turns into a jumble of different odds and ends that don't all mesh together quite right, capped off by an ending that literally comes out of nowhere.

The biggest problem here is wild swings in tone, where scenes of slapstick humor will be followed by the mother's languorous, melancholy flashbacks. The use of CGI effects and rude humor is much more pronounced than we saw in the first film, with scenes of piglets doing synchronized swimming and many of the early jokes involving copious amounts of mud and dung. Nanny McPhee also has an animal sidekick for this outing, a bird named Mr. Edelweiss with flatulence issues. Anyone who sees many children's films knows knows it's par for the course, but "Nanny McPhee" was so good about avoiding this kind of extraneous nonsense in the past, it's disappointing to see how much finds its way into the sequel.

Still, the movie deserves kudos for its willingness to put the young heroes in difficult situations and subverting some of the usual kiddie film tropes. Pompous, stocky Cyril and shoe-obsessed Celia are outrageous caricatures at first glance, and would have been villains in a lesser movie. Here their faults are gradually revealed to be the symptoms of serious troubles, and they're allowed to show their bravery and smarts alongside their scrappier cousins. The Greens' missing father, played by an almost unrecognizable Ewan MacGregor, inspires a lot of angst among his brood, and the film doesn't shy away from making his possible demise a major component of the story. But any seriousness is constantly upended by farce and spectacle, so the proceedings are far from glum.

The cast is easily the film's biggest asset. The first "Nanny McPhee" had one sterling child actor. The sequel boasts at least three - Butterfield, Vlahos, and Taylor-Ritson. Maggie Gyllenhaal keeps up a credible British accent while gaining our sympathies as the overwhelmed young mother. Rhys Ifans is a lot of fun as the dastardly, yet pathetic Uncle Phil. Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, and a few other stars also show up for good-natured cameos. As for Emma Thompson, her Nanny isn't nearly as stern or sinister as she was before, her most cutting barbs reserved for Mr. Edelweiss. She also keeps running into former charges during the course of the story, which undercuts some of her appealing oddity.

"Nanny McPhee Returns" is not a bad little film, especially if you need something to amuse the kids with, but it provides nothing new, little that's memorable, and it's not as good as the first one. But there have been far worse sequels, and there's less objectionable material to be found here than in most other comparable kids' films. A third "Nanny McPhee" is reportedly already in the works. Hopefully, it'll be a stronger piece of work than this one. We get a glimpse of Thompson's Nanny free of all her snaggle teeth and moles at the end of the film, but the payoff feels perfunctory this time, part of a formula that's already worn thin. And it's something of a relief to see her go.