A Nanny for Christmas / 2010 / made-for-tv movie - BAILED
 |
| It's Ally Leeds, and the raspberry scone guy. |
This one has been in heavy rotation for a few years. I tried to give it a re-watch, but the hurdles were insurmountable. I stuck it out on my first viewing in 2010 - in hindsight, I think that was a mistake.
Here's the rundown: Ally (Emmanuelle Vaugier), a 30-something female bubbly-but-talented ad exec, blows a pitch meeting with a short-fused chocolatier (the wonderful Dean Cain, who, aside from a brief phone call, doesn't reappear for another hour). Her ten productive years at the company aren't enough to keep her from getting axed, but a can-do attitude and a friend's marketing connection lands her in front of one of her idols - THE groundbreaking ad-world female power player. Conspicuous vagaries obscure the obvious for our heroine - she thinks she is interviewing for the ad agency. She is, in fact, interviewing for a nannying gig. I can't believe it took them that long to get to that set-up. And the plodding gets worse. She is terrified of children, and swears she doesn't know what to do with them. Yet her maternal instincts seem to kick-in instantaneously when she gets near the little brats. She oozes that distinct charm that exists in the ven-diagram intersection of momliness and divorced-dad's-younger-girlfriend; she's all perky energy and disarming smiles, teaching these buttoned-up type-A robot children how to have fun through an uncomfortable mixture of wisdom-sharing and flirtation. It doesn't help that Vaugier has permanent bedroom eyes. Every scene with the kids devolves into back-caressing and hair tousling, and there is more mistimed forced laughter than the worst dubbed anime.
Here's where things got irksome. Ally, a self-professed not-good-with-kids career woman, is on the job less than five minutes before she starts undercutting - and then deliberately reversing - every parenting decision the mother has ever made. However gender-biased and unfair it may be, Americans hate a bossy woman more interested in her job than her kids (bit of a double standard here, because our society loves marginalizing mothers who are too-interested in their own children). I get it, everyone wants to see her loosen up and let her kids be kids. But the degree to which her instructions are ignored and violated is absurd, like, really bananas. In a bizarre twist, sugar-covered pancakes are forced upon the sucrose-unaware children in the name of moderation: "…oh, you haven't tried this super-addictive food that will surround you your entire life? If everything plays out how I think it will, I'll be your nanny for at least 5 or 6 more days before I get a real ad agency job, and your newly minted sweet-tooth will be someone else's problem, I just want to make sure you're acting like what I think kids should act like."
An impromptu trip to the mother's workplace with the kiddies (verboten!) leads to her pawning them off on the hyper-busy mom while Ally, whose sole job is supervising the kids, spontaneously spews out a wildly difficult-to-uphold series of lies and carves out some free time to grab a coffee with a potential love interest. I was really disappointed when she wasn't fired on the spot for showing up at work with the kids (honestly, guys, it's like, one of four rules the mom lays out - the kids made it 8 or 9 years without having eeever seen their mom's work and Ally takes it upon herself - on her first day - to push that agenda). Words can only express so much, you need to watch the clip below - she's talking about bringing the kids to work, and in a playful, clever tone says "hmm… I have a plan." Shocker, the plan to get the kids to see the mother's work is… walking into the front door of the mother's work... and then telling the receptionist she brought the kids to see their mom and her work. ...great plan. Really, a lot of nuanced aspects to that plan. This whole time I felt like I was watching a present-day Mad Men remake where Peggy does everything Don asks her not to do, and instead of losing his shit and throwing a brandy snifter at a wall he passive-aggressively responds with sassy but restrained eyebrow-raises and eye-rolls.
My patience reached the breaking point - these children are unwatchable, and the whole thing takes place in LA to boot - a crutch that only the most magical holiday movies seem to overcome. I bailed.
NSM - Non-Santa Movie
AK - Annoying Kids
WWC - Warm Weather Christmas
Happy Holidays,
- Jon Bobby Elf
No comments:
Post a Comment