Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(2006)

Guh. I’m getting tired of commenting on really good movies. Where’s all the stinkers!?!

Nanny McPhee is great. The screenplay was written by Emma Thompson so of course it’s great. It’s full of great lessons and great humor and great drama and plenty of greatness to keep all these things great. It also has the love of my life, Angela Lansbury. Et cetera. Et cetera.

It also has Colin Firth in period costume circa 1860, a thing which I’m beginning to suspect is just a permanent part of his actual body.

If you’ve seen the film you’ll remember the two morticians who pull the same prank on Colin every single day without fail by rising up from the interior of respective coffins and shouting “Good morning, Mr. Brown!” in ghoulish voices.

In a deleted scene, one mortician proposes the notion of jumping out of something besides a coffin for a change. The other mortician politely disagrees. The first mortician happily defers to his colleague’s difference in opinion and they resolve to continue to jump out of coffins as they always have.

The scene may not progress the plot, and I understand sometimes you have to cut out your darlings. For time and pacing even good stuff has to be cut. But this scene was hilarious. Maybe don’t even call it a deleted scene. Call it a short and own it.

This film was jam-packed with colorful characters who would be infinitely entertaining to watch in their own vignettes.

The quote printed on the boxart “The New Mary Poppins!” I guess is technically true. Poppins was printed in 1934 while Nurse Matilda (on which McPhee is based, title changed to avoid confusion with Roald Dahl’s Matilda) was printed in 1988. It’s obvious there are similarities but the quote seems a bit on the nose. Most people are going to make this connection anyway. Using the quote almost makes the story seem like plagiarism. I think it’s different enough though. Connecting the two stories I don’t think helps McPhee in any marketing sense really.

Honestly, my favorite rendition of Mary Poppins is the X-Men. As Professor Xavier, James McAvoy even says “Spit spot!” to the little mutants every once in a while. Suprised he does’t carry a carpet bag around.

There’s a sequel called Nanny McPhee Returns or Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang in Canadia and The Untied Kingdom. Haven’t seen it yet.

I could gush indefinitely but that would just end up with me describing the whole movie so I’ll just stop. If you haven’t seen it, I already told you… it’s great. It’s fine for kids both cannibalistic or whatever other kind there are. (Sorry, this referred to an earlier joke I made but later edited out. I’m leaving this here anyway.)

If you love Mary Poppins, Amelia Bedelia, or Nurse Ratchet, then you’ll love Nurse Matilda.