Deborah Ross

Shut your mouth, dear

Cinema: The Nanny Diaries

issue 13 October 2007

Now, listen, and listen good, or I’ll come round and box your ears. Should anyone happen to say to you, ‘Shall we go see The Nanny Diaries tonight?’, you must answer, ‘No.’ There should be no need to embellish this. Just say ‘no’. It’s very simple. Practise it now. No, no, no, no, no. Should you not listen, and should you allow an ‘OK’ to pop out, you will not only prove yourself the lily-livered, pathetic, no-good shmuck I have always suspected you to be, but I will also have to box your ears — I know where you live — and I do not want to box your ears. Don’t you think I’ve got enough to do?

On the whole, I don’t mind a turkey, as there is usually some fun to be had with it, especially if it’s a nice, big, fat, proud, preening one, but this is such a dim and dismal runt of a turkey it would surely have been much, much kinder to have wrung its scaggy neck at birth.

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