Having lost his wife less than a year ago, undertaker Cedric Brown is unsure what to do about his seven unruly children who have exhausted 17 different nannies.  The agency has closed their doors on him, claiming they have no more nannies for his children. 

The children themselves are determined to rid themselves of every nanny that comes their way, and have made it clear that they do not wish their father to remarry, as every stepmother they have ever read about in fairy tales turned out to be wicked.  They also feel believe their father no longer loves them as he hasn’t spent any time with them since their mother passed on.

In a time before iPods and Playstations, before computers and even televisions, before even radios and automobiles, Nanny McPhee descends upon the Brown house, looking rather witch-like in appearance.  With seemingly magical powers, Nanny McPhee quickly convinces the children to start behaving and put themselves to bed. 

Her terms are simple:  She is there to teach the children five simple lessons; any other lessons they learn as a result are their own doing.  She also tells the children that as long as they need her but don’t want her, she will stay.  But as soon as they want her, but don’t need her, she will leave; that’s simply how she works.

Meanwhile, the father, Cedric, is faced with another dilemma.  As his job at the funeral parlor does not earn him enough money to support seven children, the children’s Great Aunt Adelaide has agreed to send the family a monthly check to allow them to get by.  However, she has recently written to say that if he does not find a new wife and mother for the children within a month, she will cut off that support, resulting in the loss of their house and the breakup of their family.

Filled with lots of fun moments for kids, this film is not devoid of appeal for adults.  In fact it tends to border on the same level of quirkiness that Tim Burton brought to last year’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As you might of guessed the children aren’t really all that rotten, they really are just reaching out for someone to show that they’re loved.

Emma Thompson (Junior, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) has done quite the job of taking on the dual role of both screenwriter and title character.  Having not read the Nurse Matilda books, upon which this film is based, I can’t tell you faithful she was to those, however, I can tell you she has done a great job of supplying director Kirk Jones with what he needed to create the world of the Brown family their servants and their neighbors.  My only complaint would probably be that too much attention seemed to be drawn to the fact one of Nanny McPhee’s warts disappeared after the children learned their second lesson.  I suppose this point helps the younger audiences whose attention spans are not that of most adults, but for older viewers, it seems to be overdone.

Colin Firth (The English Patient, Bridget Jones’s Diary) does quite well as the Dad trying to hold on to his last bit of sanity in the face of having lost his wife, seven children who refuse to behave, and the prospect of losing everything he cares about if he doesn’t marry within a month.  Not an easy task to portray the weight of all that, but Firth pulls it off.

Kelly Macdonald (Trainspotting, Finding Neverland) plays Evangaline, Mr. Brown’s maid, who does actually care for his children, and secretly harbors a crush for her employer, but does not see a way given their working relationship and the fact that she is uneducated.

Veteran Actress Angela Lansbury (“Murder, She Wrote”, Beauty and the Beast) is nearly unrecognizable as Great Aunt Adelaide.  But she plays the part of an obtuse, prim and proper old woman perfectly.

He may be young, but with already ten films and three television series under his belt, Thomas Sangster (The Miracle of the Cards; Love Actually) did quite well at taking the lead child role in this film.  A character whose siblings look up to and must learn to make some adult decisions along the way for the good of his father and his family.

If you’ve got kids or just enjoy solid, well-written family films, it’s definitely worth your box-office bucks.  However, if you’re not much on family fare, you may want to wait for the DVD rental.