Una tata per Natale

"A Nanny for Christmas" is a 2010 comedy film, directed by Michael Feifer with a screenplay by Michael Ciminera and Richard Gnolfo. Starring Emmanuelle Vaugier, Dean Cain, Richard Ruccolo, Cynthia Gibb, and Sierra McCormick, the film was released November 23, 2010. [1]

Ally (Emmanuelle Vaugier) is a smart young career woman who find herself needing a new job. Samantha (Cynthia Gibb) is a busy Beverly Hills advertising executive/mom who's always too busy to take care of her kids. Danny Donner (Dean Cain) is the tough-guy owner of a chocolate company who wants a major hit ad for his company. This film is the 40th Christmas film I have seen this year. Now there certain things you expect in a Christmas film. That's what gives these films a bad name. This film however has some of the things you expect but I love the fact that the children in this film are not brats to begin with. "They are nice kids".

I borrowed this DVD. I am not sure where it will play on TV. Look for it on Hallmark or the UP Channel. Family Safe and worth seeking out.

I love all the silly, "you can see the happy ending after the first 3 minutes" Christmas movies. I love them. I watch a ton every year. But this one just doesn't know what it wants to be and fails miserably trying. This movie has at least 4 (maybe 5) typical Christmas movie plots going at once, and doesn't have enough time to develop motivation of characters or resolutions for any them. Even for a Christmas movie people act in extremely contrived ways. You can't figure out why they would do that. And you don't really like them enough to care. Back stories are hinted at but not developed. It seemed the author had no idea how to set up the situation so just randomly got people to move to starting places for the story. Then there is too much plot to resolve, so abracadabra a small event or two suddenly makes everyone make decisions to tie up a happy ending for all the plots elements. Motivations for change are completely inadequate. If they had picked one or two of the several problems in the characters lives and focused on motivations and resolutions for that, it could have been a good movie. But it wasn't.

It was an all-round Christmas cheese-fest. It was very much your typical romantic comedy in a nut-shell; girl meets boy, lies about who she is, he finds out, happy ending. Whilst it did have some good moments it was often cringe-worthy to watch. Very little plot substance and some very flat acting meant that a lot of the film feels wasted. For example to make more of a story they had Ally befriend the children but this just fell flat on its face with bad acting and scenes that lacked reality. The children's relationship with their mother, the high powered advertising exec, was very odd as well and this too added to the disbelief that the children were in any way a part of the film. Whilst some scenes were shot beautifully, with stunning views of the house, the rest of it felt very home-movie-esque. The ending I could have quoted word for word as it was so predictable. However all was not lost, as there were still some nice moments and if you want a simple, cheap rom-com to warm up your Christmas, it does the job, although I doubt many of the actors will include it on their CV's.

This is your typical relax after dinner Christmas movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes, the plot isn't all that, and very predictable.. But nonetheless this movie is a nice way to kill 90 minutes.

The acting is alright, and Emmanuelle is very lovable as always, and easy on the eyes as well. Besides that, Ruccolo put up a decent performance - I didn't really think of his character in Two Guys and a Girl for any moment - so that's a good thing.

If you want to see a pretty typical "christmassy" feel good movie, this one is worth your while, go check it out.

6.5/10

Dean Cain plays VERY against type in this movie, as a bombastic company owner. When Ally Leeds, an advertising exec, pitches a campaign including an element certain to anger him, he storms out of the room and fires her ad agency, leading to her dismissal.

Later, thinking she's interviewing for a job at another agency as an ad exec, the owner of that agency thinks she's applying as a nanny and gives her that job. A bit desperate for ANY income, she accepts.

He unorthodox nanny techniques are fun, but complication arise when she falls for an ad exec at that company and pretends to also work there as an ad exec.

This is a fun movie, not at the top of our list, but one we're just fine with seeing again from time to time. It helps that we love Dean Cain, even though his role here is minor and, as I wrote, against type.