Sequels are rarely as good as the first movie, but The return of babysitter McPhee I was surprised. If you’re not familiar with Nanny McPhee, you might want to think about Disney’s Mary Poppins. Nanny McPhee shows up when a family needs her help, just like Mary Poppins. She is disciplined with children and adults, just like Mary Poppins. She has lessons to teach, and when they are complete and balance has been restored to the home, she must go, also like Mary Poppins. One of the main differences between the two characters is that Mary has a level of vanity and a certain attractiveness that Nanny McPhee does not possess (or at least not at first).
The film opens with Mrs. Isabel Green narrating about her farm, which is both charming and very dear to her heart. As we zoom in for a closer look, we meet her three children: Norman, Magsie, and Vincent. Mr. Green has been called up to the war and has been away for some time. The Green family is dealing with his absence, or so Mrs. Green tries to tell herself. The children scream and fight with each other as their mother yells at them to stop yelling.
The Green family will soon have guests staying with them for an unknown amount of time. Their cousins Cyril and Celia, who are Norman and Magsie’s age, are from the city and have been sent to stay with their aunt due to bomb threats in London. All the children will have to tidy up the farm and take care of the piglets that will be sold to the farmer Macreadie. Mrs Green has been having a hard time making ends meet because Mr Green is gone and the sale of the piglets will allow them to make a payment for the tractor so they can harvest the barley to sell. This all sounds like the perfect plan.
As Mrs. Green is on her way to work, her brother-in-law, Phil, approaches her, asking her to give him half the farm. He implores her that the farm is too much to handle. Little does she know that Phil has gambled the entire farm away. He is desperate to have the farm before the retrievers Miss Topsey and Miss Turvey take his kidneys. Mrs. Green has no intention of selling her part of her farm. Phil, who is very attached to her kidneys, discovers the family’s plan to sell the piglets and changes a plan to leave Isabel with no choice but to sell half of her. He plans to return later in the evening and dig a hole under the side of the barn where the piglets sleep and lure them out into the field to roam free.
Meanwhile, the children try to complete their homework and tidy things up for their cousins who will be arriving the next day. The cousins, however, arrive a day early and are not happy to be in “The Land of Poop”. The Green children, in turn, are not happy to have such mean, disrespectful and ungrateful guests. The bitterness between the two groups of children leads to threats, persecution, beatings and all kinds of child violence. When Mrs. Green comes home from a tiring day at work, she discovers that her niece and her nephew have arrived early and are proudly fighting with her children.
Mrs. Green is stressed, tired and is about to burst into hysterics when there is a knock on the door. Standing on the step is a stout old woman dressed entirely in black with a black feathered hat on top of a mass of dry, wiry hair. She has a front tooth sticking out of her, two large hairy moles, one on her chin and the other under her nose. Her eyebrows start at each corner of her face and meet in the middle of her to create one long, bushy brow. She introduces herself as Nanny McPhee and has been sent by the army to help the family. Mrs. Green is reluctant at first, but Nanny McPhee assures her that everything will be fine.
Nanny walks into the room where the combative youths have moved their fight and closes the door behind her. Standing up and speaking in a firm voice, she tells them to stop fighting and go to bed. The children ignore her. Nanny McPhee slowly pulls her hand out from under her long black coat to reveal a large knobby cane. She slams him firmly to the ground and sparks fly. Suddenly, by magic, the children stop fighting with each other. Now they are fighting themselves. Celia is pulling her hair, Magsie is hitting her face on the ground and then pulling her face by her hair, Cyril is getting a headlock, Norman is poking his eye, and poor Vincent is beating the whole thing up. best china with a club. They plead with Nanny McPhee to stop the situation and she will, on one condition: they must apologize for hurting each other and stop fighting. They refuse and continue to beat themselves. After some more self-inflicted suffering, they relent. She smacks her staff once more against the ground and the self-torture stops.
The children calmly approach the bed in a serene manner and say goodnight to Mrs. Green. The big dark hairy mole under Nanny McPhee’s nose disappears. As she goes upstairs to check on the children, she tells Mrs. Green that she has five lessons to teach. The first, to stop fighting, has been completed. Upstairs, Victor, Norman and Magsie refuse to share their beds with Cyril and Celia. Nanny McPhee announces to all the children how she works. “When you need me but don’t want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I must go.” Four more lessons to accompany more magical events.
The return of babysitter McPhee it’s a delight. I was surprised to learn that Academy Award-winning lead actress Emma Thompson wrote the scripts for the two Babysitter McPhee movies, which were adapted from the Nurse Matilda book series. There are some moments that are definitely more kid-friendly (like the pigs climbing trees and then starting to swim in sync), but overall it’s a lovely movie.
