| | | "A Comedy About Life at the Top, as Seen from the Bottom."
Features: DVD
The Nanny Diaries tells the story of the emotional and often humorous journey of Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman from a working-class neighborhood in New Jersey, struggling to understand her place in the world. Fresh out of college, she gets tremendous pressure from her nurse mother to find a respectable position in the business world although Annie would prefer to trade in her blackberry for an anthropologist's field diary. Through a serendipitous meeting, Annie ends up in the elite and ritualistic culture of Manhattan's Upper East Side -- as remote from Annie's suburban New Jersey upbringing as life in an Amazon tribal village. Choosing to duck out of real life, Annie accepts the position as a nanny for a wealthy family, referred to as simply "the X's." She quickly learns that life is not very rosy on the other side of the tax bracket, as she must cater to the every whim of Mrs. X (Laura Linney) and her precocious son Grayer, while attempting to avoid the formidable Mr. X (Paul Giamatti). Life becomes even more complicated when Annie falls for a gorgeous neighbor of the X's (Chris Evans) who she nicknames Harvard Hottie, and is forced to explore what she wants to do with her life.
"...does for home child care what The Devil Wears Prada did for the fashion industry." James Berardinelli's ReelViews
"Intelligent...entertaining." Richard Schickel, Time
Editor's Note
Loosely based on the bestselling roman à clef by Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus, THE NANNY DIARIES is the story of Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson), a fresh-out-of-college Jersey girl who is uncertain of her future. Annie's mother (Donna Murphy) is pressuring her to take a job in business, but Annie has more interest in anthropology. After blowing her first interview with a New York financial firm, Annie heads to Central Park to mull over her options. As fate would have it, it's there that she meets Mrs. X (Laura Linney), a wealthy mother from the Upper East Side. Mrs. X happens to witness a warm interaction between Annie and her son Grayer (Nicholas Art), and mistakenly assumes Annie is a nanny. She immediately offers Annie a job, and despite the warnings of her best friend, Linette (Alicia Keys), Annie takes it. She decides to approach the job like an anthropologist in the field, and she is alternately fascinated and appalled by her observations. Despite their luxurious lifestyle, the Xs are revealed to be a truly dysfunctional mess. Annie quickly learns that money might indeed buy you a house on Nantucket, but it certainly can't buy you an honest husband or the affection of your son.Linney is excellent as the ice-cold Mrs. X, and Paul Giamatti delivers a perfectly smarmy performance as the philandering Mr. X. The film has a great time poking fun at the absurdity and hypocrisy of Manhattan's upper-crust, and it's at its funniest when relying on the sharp observations of its source material. It's surprisingly fanciful in places, with quick nods to MARY POPPINS and its very amusing use of the Natural History Museum. A sort of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA with a fantastical edge, THE NANNY DIARIES is a satisfying slice of cinematic schadenfreude.
| Features | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Genius Products Inc |
| Release Date: 9/16/2008 |
| Running Time: 106 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2007 | | Catalog ID: 80349 | | UPC: 00796019803496 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Standard 1.33:1 [4:3] |
| Cast & Crew
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| | Professional Reviews | Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "Linney is superb....Fitfully funny..." 12/01/2007 p.94Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
"The Nanny Diaries," perhaps better titled "The Bonfire of the Nannies," is told from the point of view of a bright college graduate who is accidentally hired as a nanny by a rich Manhattan family. Having studied both anthropology and child development at NYU, she is ideally prepared to study both the X family and its issue, the 5-year-old Grayer X, and the movie is presented like the results of a research study...The movie is adapted from a best seller, unread by me, written by real-life NYU grads and sometime nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, and rumored to be based on some of their field observations. Through the eyes of Nanny, we see the rules governing dress, fashion, business, entertainment and conspicuous consumption in the same world that was memorably X-rayed by Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities...But the movie itself is sort of bland and obvious and comfortable. Nobody is really despicable enough, a mistake Tom Wolfe would never have made. It was directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, whose masterpiece, "American Splendor" (2003), told the story of the sardonic real-life Cleveland file clerk and comic book author-hero Harvey Pekar. I'd love to see his rewrite of this material. - Roger Ebert
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