Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney

Director: Robert Pulcini

Screenplay: Robert Pulcini

Running time: 1 hr 46 mins

Genre: Comedy



CRITIQUE:


Let’s dare to start with a wad of prediction: if Scarlett Johansson carries on making rom-coms for the chick-lit generation (she just followed up this one with He’s Not Just Into You), she’ll probably end up like Drew Barrymore – a loveable Hollywood pin-up star whose talent will always be under-seen and underrated. Her presence in The Nanny Diaries just about provides a facelift on an otherwise bland, overly-familiar tale of fresh graduate facing the employment world. Compromised Annie had to sacrifice anthropological pursuits for baby-sitting jobs, and head-butts against East Side ice-cold boss, an über-dressed, über-Botoxed Mum. So far, so The Devil Wears Prada. It says a lot, since the elements are entirely familiar here: girl accepts job, girl hates job, finds a hunk next door, life is not so bad, then at the end realises that money can buy Mahnolo Blahniks but never happiness. Johansson is watchable, but frankly, it is Laura Linney that clearly having the peach of a role here. Frosty as your freezer in sub-zero, porcelain appearance as brittle as china, smile as perfectly mechanised as clockwork, Linney’s ice-queen, indifferent mother serve as a bitch-slap to those Gucci-handbag toting, manicured, high-heeled control freaks. But then this supposed satire lacks the sheer bite it needs, and rather ends up toothless and pedestrian.


VERDICT: