Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang

Emma Thompson's first Nanny McPhee film in 2005 was a colossal box-office success and here is the boisterous, hyper-active, Day-Glo follow-up. Thompson herself writes, produces and stars as the Poppinsian nanny who shows up in the midst of a chaotic household, and gets (strangely) less and less ugly as the kiddies get more and more beautifully behaved. She has also, it seems, been providing English-accent coaching to its American star Maggie Gyllenhaal, who sounds so much like Thompson I half-suspected at first she was taking the mick. Gyllenhaal has to deal with mutinous children and a sinister brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans) while pining for her husband (Ewan McGregor), who's away fighting Adolf. The movie punches out broad entertainment for little kids effectively, and I predict excellent returns. But the only spark of real comedy was Bill Bailey's relaxed cameo as a local farmer with a reverence for the intellect of pigs.