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80Thompson's imagination-she's also the screenwriter-knows no bounds, and she does a brilliant job of connecting the fantastical elements to the sobering realities of life during wartime.
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80The animals are impossibly adorable, but never threaten to upset the film's delicate balance between magic and a more sobering reality. It's a fairy tale in the best tradition.
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75At its best, Nanny McPhee Returns has the playful surrealism of "Babe," if "Babe" had been directed by Terry Gilliam.
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75Has a lighter spirit than its predecessor, but it arrives at the same warm and touching place.
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75Ultimately, the performances carry the film.
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75Sweet, sentimental, silly and star-studded, Nanny McPhee Returns is one of the best children's movies of the year.
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Weighty issues such as war and divorce are mentioned, but the serious themes pass quickly. The lighthearted story always takes precedent over the special effects, but a scene involving swimming piglets will have kids flashing a sea of smiles.
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70James Newton Howard's music picks up its comic cues perhaps a bit too swiftly and loudly, but little of this detracts from the movie's many pleasures.
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70The results of her work are predictable yet pleasantly played out.
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70This comic fantasy will delight kids and parents alike.
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67Thompson, who also wrote the script, has skittery, baffling fun enjoining her plummy guest actors (including Ralph Fiennes, Rhys Ifans, and Maggie Smith) to play broad Brit types.
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63The end result, while entertaining, is the kind of unruly mess you can't imagine the indomitable Nanny McPhee tolerating.
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It can take a miracle to create a movie that's fun for kids and their parents. Luckily, Nanny McPhee has a little magic up her sleeve.
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60With flying pigs and magical nannying, this will charm children - but it could have been a little more charming for adults.
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50Nanny McPhee, the homely yet exemplary governess, is back. Why? Hard to say, but one thing is certain: Writer-star Emma Thompson didn't do it for the kids.
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50Too much of the contrasting comedy in Nanny McPhee Returns is shrill, laden with routine computer-generated effects and pounded into dust by James Newton Howard's shut-up-already musical score.
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50Pigs fly and perform a Busby Berkeley-style water ballet. Maggie Gyllenhaal sports a posh British accent. Everybody steps in dung repeatedly. These are the high points of Nanny McPhee Returns.
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50The initial close-up of Thompson - all sourly snaggletoothed and begoggled - is as funny as anything in the original. And just that one quick glimpse would have been perfect.
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50She could stand to learn a lesson herself, from another magical governess -- you know, the one about the spoon full of sugar.
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50For American children, Nanny McPhee Returns may seem something like a foreign film, but the movie has enough spoonfuls of sugar to make the Britishisms go down.
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50Neither the dangers of the plot - a dissolute uncle who wants to sell the farm, a father missing in action - nor the forbidding Nanny McPhee herself are as fearsome as they were the first time around.
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33On balance, more dignity is lost than gained.
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30McPhee's latest saga neither conjures the humanistic heart of "Babe" nor addresses father-son separation issues with the sobriety of "The Water Horse." Instead, it's merely a compendium of photocopied elements, cartoonish special effects, and easy-bake happily-ever-afters.
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30This children's entertainment-grownups beware!-is preoccupied by squishy stuff that includes mud and poop, as well as by syrup that oozes from cabinet drawers.
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20This dour, hyperactive family film is joyless, overly busy and starchy.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 8
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Mixed: 4 out of 8
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Negative: 0 out of 8
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5It's entertaining enough. That's pretty much all I have to say about this movie.