Every once in a while I’ll cap off a review to a film that I’ve felt indifferent about by saying that there are probably worse ways to spend a rainy day. Yes, but there are better ones too. Surely, Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria could spread a little sunshine on even the dreariest of days. Then again, any day with Fellini is a sunny one; metaphorically, that is. Maybe it was to my advantage that I watched Nanny McPhee on a rainy day; I mean, there are probably worse things that I could have been doing.

We open with a shot of an empty chair as the narrator tells us that it is unfortunate to open a story this way, but without the chair, there is no story. The chair belonged to the late wife of Mr. Brown (Colin Firth) who has been left with a dead-end job, which doesn’t even come close to earning him what would be required to support his seven children.

His children, not the best behaved of youths, start the film by scaring off their seventeenth nanny by dressing a chicken up in a bonnet and pretending to eat their baby sister. Mr. Brown, not knowing how to deal with his children, goes to the agency only to find that there are no more nannies.

There is a twist in the plot along the way in that Mr. Brown is being supported by Aunt Adeline (Angela Lansbury), who states that in order to continue to receive support Brown must find a wife who could be a mother to his reckless children. This provides a thankless role for Kelly Macdonald as Brown’s maid, who everyone knows he should fall in love with... expect him of course.

Then one night Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson, who also wrote the screenplay) shows up at his door. What a nanny she is. With large warts hanging off her face, a large snaggletooth that hangs down over her front lip and a magical wooden cane that sparks whenever she bangs it on the ground, she sets off to teach the children five lessons. Whatever other lessons they learn along the way, she informs Mr. Brown, will be ones that they learn for themselves.

Already plot description has begun to sound futile. It is expected that the children will try to drive Nanny McPhee out of their household and that she will use her magical powers to stay one-step ahead of them, beating them at their own games. I fear using this description, as it might be taken to refer to countless other bad films that could have been made of the material.

Nanny McPhee is no such film. It does two things that give the material a depth and humanity that is not expected: 1) Emma Thompson’s performance, and 2) the film is not content on simply providing magic and imagination, it has a human element which transcends magic, “When you need me and don’t want me I’ll stay,” says Nanny McPhee. “When you want me and don’t need me, I’ll leave.” It is simply too easy to teach a child by holding the upper hand (which in this case is Nanny McPhee’s powers). The challenge is in supporting the children and allowing them to learn on their own. In an age of unending imaginative possibilities revolving around special effects, for a film to use magic as a side note and aim for the human component is a small blessing.

Thus, the film’s best moments, surprisingly, are when Nanny McPhee is not on screen. Rather they are the moments in which the children realize the impact of her presence. She is not a witch using magic to control and change them; but rather, helps them to see that their goodness was within all along. This is in part due to the performance of Emma Thompson in the title role. Thompson, barely recognizable under her make-up, does a remarkable thing and builds her performance from the outside in. There is a tendency among actors to take gimmick roles like these and go way over the top with them. Take Mike Meyers in the Cat in the Hat, which works until we realize that it is Meyers who is funny, not the cat, and the performance becomes a distraction. Thompson, being the fine actress that she is, creates a persona which matches her exterior. She remains at ground level the entire time, playing the role not as parody, but rather, creating a real character.

Nanny McPhee could not be mistaken for great cinema; it is more admirable in its execution than it is actually enjoyable to watch. Children will of course fall in love with its broader, more whimsical moments in which Nanny McPhee casts a spell over the children, confining them to their beds after pretending to be sick.

I sometimes fear that life is too short for films like this. It does indeed fit the criteria of a good family film in that it offers something for both children and adults, but certainly, there are better things for children to be doing. Maybe the film’s logic is against itself; instead of being confined to a television screen, children should be off exploring the vast outdoors, creating their own magical adventures through imagination, not that of someone else’s in a film. Then again, if it’s a rainy day….