What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that this movie opens on a family of seven children who take pride in harassing and scaring nannies hired by their father. The kids are abusive in Home Alone-ish ways, pulling violent and sometimes disgusting pranks on adults who are supposed to look after them. Their efforts to thwart their father's marriage to a tarty (and cleavage-revealing) widow include the use of reptiles, insects, and slimy substances. The instructive nanny looks like a traditional witch, arrives on a stormy night, and uses a magical cane. Some kids may be disturbed by the death of the children's mother (not shown). The father works in a mortuary, and we see shots of dead bodies.
- Families can talk about the children's evolving attitude toward their father: How do they come to see themselves supporting him rather than challenging all adults all the time?
- How does Nanny McPhee's specific sort of magic allow her subjects tofigure out their own problems?
- And how does the father's bumbling leadto the children's taking more responsibility, for each other and him?