Lit Flicks: The Nanny Diaries

I read this several years ago and found the movie version (with Laura Linney as Mrs. X and Scarlett Johansen as Nan) in the cheap bin at Walmart over the holiday. For the purposes of the challenge, I re-read the book yesterday and finished this morning.

The book is really funny.  Our heroine is Nan (Nanny), our child is Grayer (Grover), and the antagonists are Mr. and Mrs. X, a snobbish, uber-rich couple for the Upper East side of Manhatten.  Mrs. X is an absentee mother of the worst sort; she spends all day shopping or ... something and no time parenting and still manages to think she's a terrific picture of motherhood.  Meanwhile, Nan is taking the little charge to school, play dates and an assortment of lessons and raising him.

She gets way to invested, in both the kid and his parents assorted tawdry affairs, and is rewarded by being unceremoniously let go and does not get to say goodbye to Grayer.  If you have a spare 6 hours, the book is quick and easy and entertaining.

The movie isn't good.  I can't really put my finger on what went wrong with it and I think it has to be the casting.  ScarJo is a terrible Nan.  In the novel, Nan is a child development major at NYU and nannying is part of her field work.  She's nannyed before, she's smart, she knows what's up.  In the movie, ScarJo stares around like a fish out of water and "falls" into nannying.  Which is fine and all, but it doesn't do the character justice.

**Spoiler**
In the movie Mr. X hits on Nanny.  This just seems so cliche and stupid and unnecessary.  In the novel Mr. X would never even look at Nanny much less hit on her, she was too far below his social level.

And while I love the fact that Laura Linney divorces Mr. X and becomes a terrific mom in the end, that's not what the book was about.  The book was written by two women who nannied for the wealthy and elite in New York and the novel was a compilation of their experiences.  It was an expose, of sorts.  And in the end nothing changes.  The X'es get a new nanny, persumably, Grayer grows up warped, and Mrs. X has another child.  No one changes.  Except Nan.  Whom I would guess probably won't ever be a Nanny again.

So ... finally thoughts?  The book is excellent and the movie is okay as a separate entity.  But they do not tell the same story.