#6 The teddy bear has been compromised 06 September, 2008

The Nanny Diaries (2007)

A strange one to start back with, but I just watched "The Nanny Diaries." The movie had been sitting in my queue for the longest time because I am a Scarlett Johansson fan, but I am quickly realizing, sadly, that she isn't a very good actress. Her idea of acting is to look mopey and avoid eye contact, which will only work for so long.

The movie, which is adapted from the "popular" book of the same title--and reeks of The Devil Wears Prada-- follows Annie Braddock's summer immediately after college graduation. She graduated with a finance degree and a minor in anthropology, because they obviously go so well together. Annie, at an interview for Goldman Sacs, is asked the seemingly simple question who Annie Braddock is, which, of course, she can’t answer. The movie follows the typical post college searching for meaning in your life, or at least a job phase; though it doesn't reach the successful searching of Benjamin Braddock from The Graduate. I don't think the similar last names is chance.

Annie avoids anything her future might have to offer by taking the "easy way" out, a nanny job. The audience all sees the train-wreck that is about to happen as Annie's voice over narration of the first day on the job begins "I didn't really have any experience." There are some funny lines along the way, and some heart wrenching moments, but the movie tries to hard to bring down high living upper eastsiders. Maybe if we don't pay them any attention they will go away. The movie goes down the typical checklist of the ubber rich falts. It comes to the point that you begin to wonder is there something personal going on here? I’m not defending them, but you don’t have to have a six figure salary to neglect your child. It might even make it easier when you don’t have a job. Bad parenting needs to be the focus of the movies's scorn, which it becomes roundabouly at the end, but the story focus way to much on the over privileged lifestyle to make an application of lessons learned to those on other financial rungs all but impossible

The ending spends a lot of time wrapping up things how they should be, but end up further from the truth, or, at least, what we think should happen. I know happy endings are somewhat hard to believe, but didn't someone wind up unhappy? We don’t even see if the husband got his dues, but I guess we have to be satisfied that Annie has moved on, and so has everyone else to nothing that is particular important. Next.