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Let Scott Fitzgerald tell you about the very rich.
The Nanny Diaries prefers to cover the nouveau riche, revealing for dark-comic purposes the utter self-absorption in certain Manhattan social circles.
The Nanny Diaries is a pleasant little diversion. It stars Scarlett Johansson as a recent college graduate slumming as a domestic. Her employer (Laura Linney, here with the perfect edge of frost), is an Upper East Side, New York automaton with no interest in children. She has hired Johansson to be the family nanny.
It takes too many scenes and too much talking to get Johansson into the nanny job, but once she moves into the Park Avenue hell that will be her place of work, The Nanny Diaries becomes a bit of a lark.
The film makes fun of several New York 'types' and spoofs the lifestyle of those who pay teams of people to lead their lives for them. Here are all the maids, cooks, nannies, tutors, chauffeurs and consultants who do the heavy lifting so that Mr. can take meetings and Mrs. can maintain her lunch dates, charity work and social climbing.
The film exaggerates, but it's all quite amusing because so much of it is uncomfortably close to the truth. Johannson's character struggles to build a relationship with the little boy in her care; she also struggles to avoid a romantic entanglement with a rich guy (Chris Evans) who lives in the building where she works. Her employer, meanwhile, is an obsessive whose life is all about appearances, and she treats our plucky heroine like dirt.
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It's all very cute and sitcom-ish. The material is somewhat lacklustre, but the movie works because Johansson is so adept at comedy, and because she's willing to let Linney steal every scene she's in. Johansson does a good pratfall, then graciously steps aside in the scenes that underline Linney's Park Avenue pretensions. And those scenes are hilarious.
The rest of the cast includes Paul Giamatti as the Park Avenue dad -- you need only see his haircut and his eyeglasses to get the entire character -- Donna Murphy, Alicia Keys and Judith Roberts.
The Nanny Diaries is based on a best-selling novel, has a great cast and was made by the same filmmakers who created American Splendor, but don't get your hopes up too far.
Much of the book's edge is missing from this film version, and here the story ends on a saccharin note.
Good thing the players are so watchable.
(This film is rated PG)