Newly graduated from college, Annie (Scarlett Johansson) wants to change the world. Or at least observe it. An aspiring anthropologist, she reads Margaret Mead and studies the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. Little does she know that she’ll soon be studying the “bizarre social patterns” of an alien culture less than an hour away from her New Jersey home.

Her chance comes at the start of The Nanny Diaries, when an accidental meeting in Central Park leads to a job as a nanny for Upper East Side denizen Mrs. X (Laura Linney). Because Annie’s mother wants her to be a CEO, she lies about her move to the city, saying she has a job with a finance firm and loves her new apartment. But she’s really living in a teeny room next to the laundry area, picking up Mr. X’s (Paul Giamatti) dry cleaning, and picking up her 6-year-old charge, Grayer (Nicholas Art) from school each afternoon. Annie does, however, confide in her best friend Lynette (Alicia Keys) that she’s appalled by Mrs. X’s seemingly selfish negligence of her son.

It’s not like Annie knows exactly what she’s doing (“Everything I knew about nannying,” she says, “came from the movies”), but she does discover a sense of mission, imagining herself as a newfangled Mary Poppins, complete with flying umbrella and a profound dedication to Grayer’s welfare. It’s not long before Annie sees that wealthy Mrs. X is actually very unhappy. Her husband is cheating on her, her competition with her peers is wearing her down, and her condescending attitude is based more in insecurity than in confidence.

In other words, The Nanny Diaries has very little new to say. Instead, it provides Annie with a shaky moral high ground: She’ll have to learn some lessons (lying to your mother is bad) and also find true love with the Harvard Hottie (Chris Evans), who just happens to live upstairs from the Xes.

Worse, as she observes little Grayer’s efforts to make sense of his disgruntled parents, Annie writes a “field diary,” a too-cute way for the film to take her point of view, even when she misreads situations. Linney’s smart performance helps smooth over the film’s frequent overstatements, but, for the most part, it’s a very slightly dialed down version of The Devil Wears Prada, a book Annie happens to read on the beach—so you’re aware that the film is aware of its own borrowings.