COLLEGE graduate Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johannson) would love to pursue a career in anthropology but it won't pay the bills.

Through a chance encounter in Central Park, Annie wins a position as nanny to Upper East Side doyenne Mrs X (Laura Linney) and her son Grayer.

Annie feeds her mother a lie and hastily moves into the X's guest room, suffering the tantrums of Grayer and stumbling upon an illicit liaison between Mr X (Paul Giamatti) and associate Miss Chicago.

"For the women of the Upper East Side, adultery is pathologically ignored," observes Annie, as Mrs X goes about her day-to-day business of shopping and meetings, leaving the nanny to pick up the pieces.

A burgeoning romance with a neighbour, forbidden under Mrs X's rules, threatens to distract Annie as she witnesses the implosion of the X household.

The Nanny Diaries has aspirations to be The Devil Wears Prada of childrearing but while the screenplay occasionally bears its teeth, there is no bite.

Satire is smothered in sentimentality and Johannson's long-suffering heroine is too insipid.

Linney's performance as the unfeeling bitch on the rocky road to redemption is stymied by the lacklustre script, while Giamatti doesn't have enough screen time to be anything more than a flimsy plot device.

  • See it at the ABC and Odeon