Nanny McPhee Returns

Name: Nanny McPhee Returns
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy, Family
Released: August 20, 2010
Duration: 109 min
Rating: 52
Cast: Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes

2010

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Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 55 Ratings

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Nanny Mcphee Returns

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Movie Details & Credits

Universal Pictures | Release Date: August 20, 2010 | PG

Starring: Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes

Summary: Nanny McPhee arrives to help a harried young mother who is trying to run the family farm while her husband is away at war, though she uses her magic to teach the woman's children and their two spoiled cousins five new lessons.

Director: Susanna White

Genre(s): Fantasy, Comedy, Family

Rating: PG

Runtime: 109 min

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Critic Reviews

Glenn Whipp

The animals are impossibly adorable, but never threaten to upset the film's delicate balance between magic and a more sobering reality. It's a fairy tale in the best tradition. Read full review

Roger Moore

Sweet, sentimental, silly and star-studded, Nanny McPhee Returns is one of the best children's movies of the year. Read full review

Carrie Rickey

At its best, Nanny McPhee Returns has the playful surrealism of "Babe," if "Babe" had been directed by Terry Gilliam. Read full review

Claudia Puig

The end result, while entertaining, is the kind of unruly mess you can't imagine the indomitable Nanny McPhee tolerating. Read full review

Mike Scott

She could stand to learn a lesson herself, from another magical governess -- you know, the one about the spoon full of sugar. Read full review

Mike Hale

Neither the dangers of the plot - a dissolute uncle who wants to sell the farm, a father missing in action - nor the forbidding Nanny McPhee herself are as fearsome as they were the first time around. Read full review

Joe Neumaier

This dour, hyperactive family film is joyless, overly busy and starchy. Read full review

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User Reviews

heyitsmegrif4

Dec 17, 2011

Funny, charming, visually well done, and well performed from Emma Thompson. This is a definite improvement on the original because it is entertaining. I five this film a 93% of a good movie.

4 of 8 users found this helpful44

TheQuietGamer

Feb 13, 2011

This was in my opinion better than the first movie, it's funny and the characters are enjoyable, my only complaint is that it has a crappy opening which makes you think this movie is going to suck, but after that it turns out to be one of the best movies of 2010.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

FilipeNeto

Jan 14, 2020

A meritorious continuation.

This fantasy movie is an expected sequel as the initial movie was a box office hit. It happens decades after the events of the first film (although the connection between them is discreet) and brings more of it: a mother whose husband went to war and who needs toA meritorious continuation.

This fantasy movie is an expected sequel as the initial movie was a box office hit. It happens decades after the events of the first film (although the connection between them is discreet) and brings more of it: a mother whose husband went to war and who needs to unfold between work, her farm care and education the children she has at home, and the two spoiled brats from the city with whom they will soon quarrel.

In fact, here, the movie sins because it can't bring anything truly new or different from the previous one. What saves the movie is the fact that it is fun and has truly hilarious moments, like synchronized piglet swimming. It all happens in the middle of World War II, but it is too light a film to make it truly feel in the plot. The war only becomes palpable in the middle of the movie, a turnaround that, after all, was more or less expected.

Again, it is the children who are given the whole stage when it comes to making the audience laugh. They match entirely and are excellent. The direction of the film is once again in the hands of Emma Thompson, who continues to secure the lead role and the script's authorship, ensuring that this film can match its predecessor. Maggie Gyllenhaal is beautiful and captivates our sympathy, Rhys Ifans is quite entertaining and a bit stupid when trying to be a villain, opposite Sinead Matthews and Katy Brand very well. Ralph Fiennes and Ewan McGregor make brief welcome appearances and Maggie Smith, side by side with veteran Sam Kelly, is impeccable, as always.

Technically, the film still bets heavily on CGI and visual and sound effects, which is normal, but I felt that there was more restraint in its use. The sets and costumes are also better and more realistic, and that troublesome eye strain caused by too much color, so evident in the first film, was corrected.

In short, this movie is an excellent continuation of the first movie. But unless they decide to present something different in a hypothetical third movie, I think the revenue presented so far runs out of this movie.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Shiira

Aug 28, 2010

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Cut the Green children some slack; their father is away at war. It's hard being left behind, the not knowing, moment to moment, if you still have two parents. Life during wartime, life on a pig farmer's wages, that's more than enough stress for Norman(Asa Butterfield) and Megsie(Lil Woods), the muddy children of a soldier who worry if their evergreen mother(the beautiful Maggie Gylenhaal) can keep the farm from going under. While machinations loom, the agenda of a degenerate uncle(Rhys Ifans) with gambling debts to pay off, the Green family takes in borders, the Gray children, Cyril(Eros Vlahos) and Celia(Rosie Taylor Rilson), rich cousins from the city who don't like their new digs, and don't like them. "Nanny McPhee Returns" deals a lot with the dynamics between the bourgeois and the proletariat, and how even a woman of modest means end up on the wrong side of the class war(i.e. Ms. Kilman, the homely tutor who fawns over Elizabeth in Virginia Woolf's "Miss Dalloway"). Matilda, Nanny McPhee's real name(the two films are adapted from Christianna Brand's "Nurse Matilda" books), was also the name of a boxing kangaroo(Daniel Mann's "Matilda", starring Elliott Gould), which is so befitting since the nanny runs a kangaroo court. When a brouhaha erupts in the children's quarters, not only are Cyril and Celia punished, but Norman and Megsie, as well, even though their misbehavior is only natural, a result of their houseguests' ingratitude who put on airs from the very moment they arrive. Nanny McPhee(Emma Thompson) is magic; she casts a spell on her charges by striking her walking stick on the ground as a means of discipline, when what she really ought to do is reprimand the pint-sized urbanites for being such ungrateful little snots. But no, the nanny arbitrates arbitrarily, punishing both the poor and rich alike, without ever considering the factors of the situation. Under the thrall of McPhee's invocation, Norman turns into a vandal, and watches helplessly as the nanny nearly turns his father's warfront dispatches into ash. As it turns out, the rich have their own issues to deal with, and in the Gray children's case, they have a stereotypically British military father(stiff upper lip and the whole nine yards) who seems, literally, cold-blooded, when the moviegoer sees him handle Cyril's request. (Ralph Fiennes would be right at home in Alan Parker's "Pink Floyd: The Wall".) Now the moviegoer sympathizes with the boy and girl, just like the nanny, who helps Mrs. Green because she's not one of the common people, after all. With each good deed, the nanny grows more and more beautiful, until she looks, well, just like Emma Thompson, a lady.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

MichaelD

Feb 26, 2011

It's entertaining enough. That's pretty much all I have to say about this movie.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Susano

Sep 24, 2010

Several decent moments, but in many aspects this is a average film at best, with a uninspired and badly plotted story, and often feels like a Frankenstein's monster of bits and bobs that don't fit well together. Sub par performances, a dull plot and a poorly thought out film in general.Several decent moments, but in many aspects this is a average film at best, with a uninspired and badly plotted story, and often feels like a Frankenstein's monster of bits and bobs that don't fit well together. Sub par performances, a dull plot and a poorly thought out film in general. Deeply average.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

kylerawks

Aug 1, 2013

This movie is just another terrible movie filled with stupid misbehaved British kids. This one is just as bad as the first. Nannys suck. Never see this movie ever.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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