Writer-directors Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bemoan the fact that none of Scarlett Johannson's movies "have taken advantage of her comic ability."

There's good reason for this. She hasn't got any.

However, it takes almost 100 minutes of laugh-free drudgery to bring the point home that Hollywood's pouter-in-chief is comedy kryptonite.

She plays New Jersey college drop-out Annie Braddock, a wannabe anthropologist (yes, really) whose career path takes a swerve when she's mistaken for a nanny in Central Park.

Inundated with job offers from rich families who can't hang onto their own, she eventually ends up in the palatial Manhattan Upper East Side apartment of the family X.

She's given the grim task of looking after the precocious, nay bloody thumpable, son Grayer (Nicholas Reese Art), a spoilt brat against whom other spoilt brats must be measured.

Pretty soon she realises that the highly-strung mother (Linney) is being perfectly beastly to her as displaced revenge for her philandering hubbie (Paul Giamatti) shafting his secretary.

Well, give the girl a first-class honours degree in sociology. Actually, no - just give her a slap.

This is absolutely ghastly, made all the worse by its risible - and desperate - references to the nanny classic Mary Poppins.

You pray Linney and Giamatti were suitable reimbursed because their roles have the depth of a doormat and the sight of them spouting this nouveau riche tosh tugs at the soul.

If hell is other people's children then Grayer - who never really changes his spots as a vile anklebiter - is in the deepest, darkest recess of diabolic depravity.

Annie's painstakingly acquired anthropological thesis can basically be summed up that money don't necessarily make you nice. And it can make you horrid.

This isn't very nice...in fact it's extremely horrid.

Tim Evans