Nanny McPhee falls back on the Nickelodeon principle "If all else fails, hit 'em with a retina-searing overload of visual and aural information."

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Nov 27, 2006

...Pleasing but ultimately unsatisfying.

| Jun 24, 2006

Frays in the second half… Fancy Darcy as a limp romantic lead!

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 7, 2006

Frothy and fun yet deliciously dark...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

The kids will love the candy-box sets and costumes like confectionery-shop windows, the whimsy and farcical grotesqueness of it all.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2006

Pleasantly diverting.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 4, 2006

Any time Thompson curls that prosthetic snaggletooth over her lower lip and murmurs a nearly inaudible harrumph is a comic moment to be treasured.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 4, 2006

There's nothing offhand or spontaneous-feeling about Nanny McPhee; it's a highly mechanical piece of work, and its potentially delightful details are wasted.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2006

In a seemingly blithe way, the movie captures an aspect of child consciousness not usually explored onscreen -- that zone between innocence and knowledge.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 27, 2006

Naughty (and nice) children of all ages, particularly little girls, should gobble this one up, and rightly so.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 27, 2006

Nanny McPhee has its own enduring charm, a mix of witty dialogue, pie-throwing slapstick and eccentric family portrait.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 27, 2006

This bracing adaptation of the Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand is the acidic antidote to Mary Poppins sweetness.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 27, 2006

The kiddie komedy of Nanny McPhee shows that Mary Poppins plus Charles Dickens can add up to less than even Cheaper by the Dozen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2006

Although such elements lend the film an edge most American children's films wouldn't dare, Nanny McPhee is actually quite conventional in virtually every other regard.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 27, 2006

A howling headache-inducer that features bratty urchins prone to torturing people and a color scheme resplendent with hot-pink bustiers and peeling lime paint.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 27, 2006

Thompson's script is clever and, despite that monstrous makeup, her performance is deliciously balanced by the standards of what is, after all, a children's fable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2006

Nanny McPhee offers solid family entertainment in the face of it all. Mary Poppins, eat your heart out.

| Original Score: B | Jan 27, 2006

Nanny McPhee is clever enough, but it never feels like it's hitting quite the right notes.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2006

A winning tale of naughty children in need of love and the mysterious governess who comes to their aid.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 27, 2006

With Yours, Mine and Ours and Cheaper By the Dozen 2 lately cluttering up the multiplexes with teeming masses of onscreen children in search of a better agent, Nanny McPhee arrives as a jolly improvement.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2006