Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti, Reese Art.

Running time: 105 mins . . .

THERE'S a price for going Hollywood, and Shari Spring Berman and Robert Pulcini, directors of the indie hit American Splendor, pay it with a loss of satirical edge in their otherwise entertaining adaptation of a roman a clef bestseller about looking after the children of bored Manhattan moms.

Scarlett Johansson (pictured) shows a return to form as a plainspoken New Jersey girl just out of college who takes a job as a nanny rather than using her degree to get a foot on the faceless corporate ladder.

Her nemesis is Upper East Side trophy wife Laura Linney who is so busy doing nothing that she has no time for her only child, an insecure little boy who takes his frustration out on a succession of hapless nannies.

Paul Giamatti is the personification of fat cat arrogance as the neglectful husband and dad.

There are some darkly comic sociological touches, as when nannies . . . mostly from the Third World . . . are obliged to attend familiarity sessions with moms to iron out any difficulties in communication ("Feel completely free to say what you think, " they're assured), and the performances are convincingly observed, but too often the directors take the soft option, making laboured play of Mary Poppins allusions and preferring sentimentality to the daring implicit in the material.