No matter our age or gender, most of us love magic. I especially turn on to stories whose biggest magic turns out to be inside its characters. They simply have to activate it, and then a bigger sorcery can kick in to polish it up. The phrase "God helps those who help themselves" comes to mind. In Nanny McPhee, the main character is a catalyst for good and a higher power that provides it, but acts only when the main characters initiate the process. Based on the Nurse Matilda books by Christianna Brand, this movie entertains as it painlessly enlightens.

The Brown family -- seven children and their widowed father -- apparently live in 19th-century Europe. Mr. Brown is a mortician. Busy with work and halfhearted attempts to find a wife to replace his deceased spouse, he has not made time for his kids. They have become absolute monsters who are proud of the fact that they have already done in 17 nannies. The first time we see them, they are terrorizing the kitchen, having tied up the cook (Imelda Staunton) in a siege that makes most kidnapping movies look like warmup acts.

A knock at the door, a silhouette through the window, and enter Nanny McPhee, a grim, frumpy woman with warts, a bad complexion, a ready-for-battle hair bun, and one huge snaggletooth. The government has sent her, she says, to be the children’s nanny. She is a woman of few words who carries a big stick, and when she taps the latter on the ground, strange things can happen. She is there to teach the children five lessons of obedience. Each time they learn a lesson, one of Nanny McPhee’s grotesque facial horrors disappears -- first one wart, then another -- until we recognize her as the lovely Emma Thompson. Nanny McPhee reminds everyone that when she is needed but not wanted, she will be there, but that when she is wanted but not needed, she will move on.

Thompson plays the lead in her own screenplay, and it is her admirably restrained performance that makes this movie click. She is the antithesis of bubbly Mary Poppins. She grunts, says little, and isn’t at all perky. No spoonful of good-tasting medicine for her -- quite the opposite. Yet there’s a sureness to her actions that makes an audience know that she knows what she’s about, and is there for the greater good. When Mr. Brown almost marries a horrible widow (a deliciously shrill Celia Imrie) and the children ask McPhee to cast a spell to make dad see the light, she says the spell must come from them. And, in a hilarious sequence of events that reminds one of Buster Keaton, right down to a hysterical food-fight finale, it does.

The décor is over the top, with outrageous colors and garish sets, and the humor is anything but subtle. But it works -- Thompson and director Kirk Jones have struck just the right balance between internal reality and external absurdity. Watching this good family film, kids and parents can laugh and learn together. Its broad humor will keep the attention of even the youngest child, while its adult message will engage older minds. Impeccably cast, it even brings Angela Lansbury back to the screen as Mr. Brown’s rich, dour Great Aunt Adelaide. Nanny McPhee will tickle your more obvious funny bone yet leave you with much to discuss with your offspring -- or, if you don’t have children, with your nephews and nieces.

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