The Nanny Diaries (PG-13, 2007)

Recent college grad Annie (Scarlett Johansson) wants to change the world. An aspiring anthropologist, she reads Margaret Mead and studies the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. Soon she's studying "bizarre social patterns" of an alien culture less than an hour away from her New Jersey home, as nanny to the X family: Upper East Side denizen Mrs. X (Laura Linney), Mr. X (Paul Giamatti), and 6-year-old charge Grayer (Nicholas Art).

THE NANNY DIARIES has very little new to say. Instead, it provides Annie with a shaky moral high ground: She'll have to learn some lessons and also find true love with the Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans), who just happens to live upstairs from the Xs. Worse, as she observes little Grayer's efforts to make sense of his disgruntled parents, Annie writes a "field diary," a too-cute way for the film to take her point of view, even when she misreads situations.

Linney's smart performance helps smooth over the film's frequent overstatements, but, for the most part, it's a very slightly dialed down version of The Devil Wears Prada, a book Annie happens to read on the beach -- so you're aware that the film is aware of its own borrowings. Perhaps most frustrating is the movie's focus on beleaguered women, which doesn't lead to any sense of "freedom" (despite the fact that George Michael's song by that name shows up on the soundtrack a couple of times). "I don't think that having money makes it any easier," Annie opines at last.