Nanny McPhee again works her magic

Emma Thompson reprises her role in "Nanny McPhee Returns" as the tough-love British domestic with the magic walking stick.

McPhee bangs her polished stick on the ground, shock waves shoot forth and a great noise is heard, but that's not the magic part. The magic is that when the noise is heard, all unruly children in the vicinity begin to behave, immediately.

It's a fantasy that appeals mainly to adults, whom I suspect are the reason the original was an unexpected hit. We found a hero in Nanny McPhee, the dour disciplinarian who brings children smartly to heel.

McPhee is a more authoritarian version of the British nannies we've seen previously in movies who sought to control children with a spoonful of sugar or a happy song.

None of that nonsense for McPhee. She does not go as far as corporal punishment, but she does not spare the rod. It may be that children are also intimidated by her big hairy warts. Believe me, though, if warts worked so well, we'd all grow them.

No, I think it's the fearsome stick we parents want, and "Nanny McPhee Returns" gives it to us, after dillydallying with a dullsville prologue.

In the setup, we meet an overmatched country housewife (Maggie Gyllenhaal) whose husband (Ewan McGregor) is off fighting a world war, leaving her with three willful children. To boot, she's about to be saddled with a snotty niece and nephew resettled to the country from bomb-plagued London.

The children combine to form a seething ball of chaos, and on top of that, Mom must fend off her pushy brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans), who is saddled with gambling debts and of a mind to sell the family farm from underneath her.

She's at her wits' end until the appearance of Nanny McPhee, who soon sets things right and teaches the children object lessons in courage, cooperation, kindness and something else alliterative that I can't remember. Cognition?

Again, it's a kids movie pitched to parents, who get to see (tough but fair) discipline applied to children who are instantly and permanently reformed. I'm not sure there's as much here for kids - most of the second and third acts are marked by mediocre slapstick comedy, so blandly staged that even Ifans ("Greenburg") looks like he's trying too hard for laughs.

The only performer to emerge without a professional scratch is Thompson, who as usual makes the most of her character, warts and all.

Produced by Lindsay Doran, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, directed by Susanna White, written by Emma Thompson, music by James Newton Howard, distributed by Universal Pictures.