‘Nanny McPhee Returns’: More Emma Thompson would have helped

She’s not exactly the opposite of Mary Poppins, but close: Nanny McPhee, Emma Thompson’s delightfully odd caregiver, lacks the “spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.” Actually, she looks like she just swallowed a crate of lemons.

First introduced to movies in 2005’s “Nanny McPhee,” the character returns in a film titled, naturally enough, “Nanny McPhee Returns.” Thompson penned the script, as she did the first time around.

And once again the fearsome-looking Madame McPhee is given a new household to straighten out. During World War II, a mother (Maggie Gyllenhaal) tries to keep from losing her English farm while her husband is away in the fighting.

She’s got three kids of her own, and her niece and nephew — two horrid brats from the upper class — have arrived for an extended stay. Her brother-in-law (smarmy Rhys Ifans) is trying to cajole her into selling the farm, the better to pay his gambling debts.

Need I say that a visit from Nanny McPhee is imminent? With her facial moles and unibrow in robust shape, Nanny McPhee brings her peculiar form of magic (which includes the ability to conjure baby elephants out of thin air) to get the children in line.

The first “Nanny” movie had a deliberate fairytale quality to it, verging on a live-action cartoon. With a new director (Susanna White) and a more naturalistic style, the sequel doesn’t quite jibe the magic tricks with the more realistic setting.

Gyllenhaal, doing an English accent that sounds quite a bit like Emma Thompson’s regular speaking voice, is spirited and sympathetic. The film’s also got a nicely judged scene from Ralph Fiennes, and the dotty presence of Maggie Smith. (Seems half the “Harry Potter” cast is here, but perhaps you could say that of any British film these days.)

The main problem with the sequel is that Emma Thompson herself isn’t on screen enough.

I miss some of her vocal mannerisms from the first movie, as well as the fact that for large stretches of that film she comes across as more sinister than sweet.

Here, we’re not fooled by the goofy make-up; we know Nanny McPhee is a good-hearted soul from the start. She’s looking more like Mary Poppins all the time.