A drama-comedy-musical set to release in December at the soonest, Annie (2014) will be quite a right movie for a family holiday season later.
Annie is a New York street-wise foster kid who was left at the Domani restaurant as a baby. Living with a few other girls in the care of the embittered Ms. Hannigan, she always return to the Domani at Fridays, the only day they serve canoli there, to wait for her parents. William Stacks is a mobile communications mogul and New York mayoral candidate who is losing out in the surveys. One day Annie got saved from a speeding van by Stacks, and his aides Guy and Grace think it’ll do him good to temporarily foster Annie. She gets to experience Stacks’ super luxury smart-house and even buys new phones for her foster kid friends. In their own timing Grace and Stacks get close to Annie in person. Annie learn from Stacks that she can be successful in life as long as she work hard. Grace accompanies Annie almost everywhere, including to wait at Domani one Friday. Annie learns that both Stacks and Grace actually likes each other but they both avoid admitting to it. Annie also asks Stacks’ staff Nash to try to find her parents using the mobile communications resources. One night Stacks brings Annie to a function party, where he lets Annie talks on stage. Her talk and singing charm the audience. But after that Annie runs from the party as Guy asks her to read a formal speech to lift up Stacks’ name from a teleprompter.
From this Stacks learns that Annie actually can’t read but she hides it very well all this time. Guy finds out about Annie asking Nash a favor. Guy then goes to Hannigan to help him in finding actors to play as Annie’s parents to fake a reunion in order to crank Stacks’ electability. Annie manages to have Stacks and Grace dress up and they compliment each other. Stacks soon begins thinking about really adopting Annie. But without Stacks knowing Guy has already found his actors and tell Annie and Stacks about the parents being found. They reunite under press coverage, with Stacks confused whether to be sad or happy. But Hannigan comes to her senses as Stacks tells her how Annie really thinks of her. She ultimately breaks the secrecy to Stacks. On the car with ‘her parents’, Annie figures out the truth by herself, but they lock the door on her as she tries to get out. Stacks, Grace, Hannigan and the other foster kids look for Annie from the air with Stacks’ helicopter. Now quite famous, Annie tried yelling for help with people other cats paticularly while they stop at traffic lights, and those people publish photos of her to the social media. Stacks and the group use those photos’ location to track Annie down. They eventually get to her, and the fake parents are apprehended. Stacks realize that he has to focus more on things close to him and he announce his withdrawal from the mayoral candidacy and tells his feelings to Grace.
Being a second remake of the original 1982 movie, this movie nicely twists the story, adding, reducing and changing some key elements but keeping the main plot line to stay true to the original. The story is being quite a heavy in the essence. Themes such as abandoned children and parent-child reunification were never easy to discuss. But this movie can really turn the table on such a thing. The character design on Annie and the overall focus of the story set between Annie, Stacks and to some extent Grace really can steer the viewers assumption from a sadder initial to a much happier way in viewing the character’s problems. It’s also done through the help of the dominantly cheerful songs, even the ones on the sadder moments.
The family and drama parts of the story fits in nicely as the movie tends to spread its focus from mainly at Annie, into a a wider angle with Stacks and Grace. All those bonding and relationship building scenes are nicely done well enough while keeping the main theme anchored to the movie by showing Annie still keeping her hopes for her parents coming to get her. Also the movie nicely returns back from time to time to Hannigan and the other foster kids, nicely preparing the viewers for the final conflict and ending.
The songs are dominantly cheerful, enabling the movie to make the cast to dance as well as sing in the process. What’s nice to see is that of the well known cast, except for Bobby Cannavale, gets to sing and dance. Even though maybe the singing parts can be retouched by audio techniques, at least they get to do the dancing parts, a rare thing to see from those stars. I must say that there are some songs that are strangely placed in the movie. Those misplaced songs feel like they happen out of nowhere, like characters just start singing out of nowhere.
The action overall is a decent work. Quvenzhane Wallis did okay in doing a lead role with her character’s name as the movie title, which at times can be a greater burden. Jamie Foxx nicely retains his usual character of quite a fast-talker. Rose Byrne again uses her faked British accent, but maybe it’s a bit overdone this time. Cameron Diaz did her singing and dancing parts well as she has the most experienced compared to the other cast members, although I think her angry expressions tend to feel overdone.
My say is that Annie (2014) is a movie worth something like a 6 out of 10 score. I think this movie will be entertaining and quite fitting to its release timing later at the Christmas holiday season. Quite a nice family drama musical with some comedic touches here and there.
This Too Will Pass 