Ms. Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Ms. Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Directed by Bharat Nalluri

(PG-13)

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A budding American starlet befriends an old-fashioned English governess.

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Ms. Pettigrew Lives for a Day attempts to “evoke the champagne fizz of classic screwball comedies” but falls flat, said Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. Down-at-the-heels Ms. Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) is the opposite of Mary Poppins. She’s a British governess who, in desperate need of work, accepts a job as a social secretary to a flighty actress (Amy Adams) who transforms her life. This adaptation of the 1938 novel by Winifred Watson is a “trifle of a movie confection,” said Rex Reed in The New York Observer. Bharat Nalluri douses it with sugary goodness and lathers on the theatrics. But he lacks the directing chops to “tackle the mad, self-perpetuating, and cynical world of drunken debutantes and social-climbing good-for-nothings that populated London” prior to World War II. Although Nalluri misses the feeling of the period, he shows an affection for his actors, said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. Adams has plenty of room to show off her comedic gift, and McDormand brings “more pathos” to a rather weightless role. Together they make an odd but endearing couple.