Quite often good casting can make an otherwise middling film quite entertaining. Such is the case in "Miss Pettigrew ...," a film that seems as though it would practically scream "decent but unmemorable" were it not for the performances of its pair of highly talented leads, Frances McDormand and Amy Adams.
McDormand plays the title character, the "nanny of last resort" who has been told, after a string of firings, that her agency has no more use for her. In a desperate act, she swipes the card off her boss' desk with information for a woman she believes needs a nanny. What she finds instead is Adams' Delysia Lafosse, a lounge singer and wannabe actress who wanted a social secretary solely because her rival has one. But boy does she need one, as she tries to juggle a trio of men (including the piemaker himself, "Pushing Daisies" star Lee Pace) and secure a stage role she's convinced will be her big break.
If you can't tell from the description, this is an often lighter-than-air screwball comedy, filled with comic mishaps and webs of lies that have a way of unraveling at inopportune times. Any time I felt like dismissing it, though, the leading ladies would lift the film on their shoulders and will it to be entertaining. Watching McDormand's world-weary character's eyes light up as she gets swept into Lafosse's more glamorous world just brought a wide smile to my face, and, for an actress best known for her dramatic roles, she displays some quite deft comic timing. She also supplies the gravity that keeps the film from floating away, including a short exchange with Ciaran Hinds as airplanes fly overhead that proves the film's most genuinely moving dramatic moment.
And what more can I say about Amy Adams? She is simply a comic force of nature, but one who also supplies a shocking amount of depth when called upon (her performance in "Junebug" is still one of the decade's best). Like in her star-making role in "Enchanted," Adams again is playing a bit of a wide-eyed innocent here, albeit a ... how shall we say it ... tarted-up one. And just like in that Disney film, she proves compulsively watchable the whole way through.
As for the film they inhabit, well, it is what it is. Don't expect many huge laughs, but if you temper your expectations a bit, it does supply a steady stream of chuckles and a chance to watch two of the best actresses working play off each other for an hour and a half. Given the other options at the theater these days, that's pretty darned good.
By the way, I'm going to shoot for 90 before I make my 2007 rundown, and I'm still 10 short. Those 10 likely will include "Beowulf," "Paprika," "Bug," "Ten Canoes" and "This is England," among others. Unfortunately they probably won't include "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "The Savages," I'm Not There" and "Persepolis," but I want to get this thing started, and all of those release dates are at least a month away.
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