Pigs fly and perform a Busby Berkeley-style water ballet. Maggie Gyllenhaal sports a posh British accent. Everybody steps in dung repeatedly.
These are the high points of “Nanny McPhee Returns,” an overlong and overproduced sequel to the dimly recalled 2005 family flick written by and starring Emma Thompson as the poor kid’s Mary Poppins, a snaggle-toothed magical nursemaid with hairy moles.
That one was set in Victorian London, but this time McPhee lands in the midst of the English countryside during World War II — which, I think, is going to require a serious premovie parental tutorial for most contemporary American children.
Otherwise the dear little ones may be a trifle confused about just why very spoiled and obnoxious London kids Cyril (Eros Vlahos) and Celia (Rosie Taylor-Ritson) have been sent to live on a farm against their wills.
It’s owned by an aunt they’ve never met — Mrs. Green, who can barely cope with her own rambunctious brood: Norman (Asa Butterfield), Megsie (Lil Woods) and Vincent (Oscar Steer).
Mrs. Green’s husband, played by the briefly seen Ewan McGregor, is off fighting the war. The government, asserts McPhee, has sent her (and her flatulent crow) to stop the kids from battling among themselves and to teach them various life lessons.
There’s a charming little film struggling to get out of this nearly two-hour CGI extravaganza, which includes star turns by Maggie Smith as a dotty old lady and Ralph Fiennes as the London kids’ forbidding father.
Rhys Ifans is far funnier as the comic villain being blackmailed by a pair of wacky sisters, though I wonder if the kids will find him forging a death-notification telegram to persuade Mrs. Green to sell the farm all that amusing.
I kept hoping a Nazi would drop into the action — and one does, sort of.
By the way, if you take the kids to see “Nanny McPhee Returns,” you should also be prepared to explain whether explosive devices can be defused using cuticle scissors.