Last night, I persuaded my friends, the Snarkalecs. to watch a movie on Lifetime with me.  That movie was The Nightmare Nanny.

Why Were We Watching It?

I have to take the blame on this one.  Usually, the Snarkalecs and I watch and live tweet a SyFy film on Saturday but last night, SyFy was showing Sharknado for the 100th time.  So, some of us were meeting up on twitter and trying to decide what we were going to watch.  Since I’m always trying to get more people addicted to watching Lifetime movies, I suggested that we all watch The Nightmare Nanny.  To my surprise and delight, everyone agreed.

What Was It About?

Creepy Anne (Ashley Scott) and her girly husband Ben (Kip Pardue) need to find a nanny to look after Jenny, their ennui-stricken 3 year-old daughter.  After an extensive search, they hire Julie (Makenna Melvin).  Julie is great with Jenny and, as Anne starts to realize, Jenny would actually much rather be Julie’s daughter.  However, little do they suspect that Julie is actually Amber and she and her white trash boyfriend are planning to kidnap Jenny so that they can raise her as their own.

What Worked?

The Snarkalecs were on fire last night!  Seriously, we may not have been watching a SyFy film but we snarked it like we were.  Hopefully, this will lead to the Snarkalecs watching even more Lifetime films.  I’m praying that I can get them to all watch Confessions of a Go Go Girl sometime soon.  Seriously, that’s the greatest Lifetime film ever!

As for The Nightmare Nanny itself… well…

What Did Not Work?

To be honest, The Nightmare Nanny was probably one of the worst Lifetime films that I’ve ever seen.

As played by Makenna Melvin, the nanny was so obviously unstable that you had a hard time believing that anyone would actually be stupid enough to hire her in the first place.

Meanwhile, the nightmare nanny’s victims (played by Kip Pardue and Ashley Scott) were both so unlikable that you found yourself hoping that they somehow wouldn’t be able to rescue their daughter because you simply couldn’t accept that these two would ever be able to conceive and take care of a child.  You found yourself suspecting that maybe they themselves had previously kidnapped Jenny from her natural parents.  Pardue was incredibly wimpy and Ashley Scott had perhaps the scariest eyebrows ever seen on television.  Is it any surprise that Jenny didn’t seem to be all that upset over being kidnapped, perhaps for the second time?

Speaking of the daughter, there was something very odd about her.  Not only did she never talk, walk, smile, or do anything else but she also slept in a crib despite appearing to be way too old.  Between the nightmare nanny and the odd parents, somebody seriously needed to call social services because there was just something odd going on in that household.

Finally, Nightmare Nanny failed to provide us with what we expect from a good Lifetime movie.  At no point did the nightmare nanny attempts to seduce the husband by wandering around in lingerie.  The wife’s sassy best friend survived the entire film.  Nobody wore anything that looked like it could have been designed by the designers on Project Runway.  The film’s climax was almost defiantly bereft of melodrama.

I’ve seen a lot of psycho nanny films on Lifetime and let’s just say that The Nightmare Nanny was no Perfect Nanny.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

Usually, I can find a whole lot of “Oh my God!  Just like me!” moments whenever I watch a Lifetime film.  However, that wasn’t the case with Nightmare Nanny.  Seriously, the characters in this film were just too odd.

However, I did relate to a few of the commercials that were shown during the film.  For instance, I recently had a shrieking orgasm while washing my hair with Herbal Essences.

Lessons Learned

Never hire a nanny without checking Angie’s List first.