Right out of the gate, Annie announces that this is not your mother’s musical.
A red-headed little girl (named Annie) is belting out an obnoxious song in front of her bored classmates. She sits down and the real Annie steps up—a hipster urchin in a denim skirt and pink chucks; adorable, but in a decidedly low-key way—and leads the class in a sing-chant about the unfairness of our economic system. This is an Annie for a new generation: Cute, socially aware, and cool.
My first thought upon hearing that Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) would be playing Annie in a new movie was, “At last, black little girls will have an Annie of their own!” But that was short-sighted of me. At the screening I attended, girls of all races (and boys, too, of course), were wide-eyed and delighted by this multicultural production. It is, at last, an Annie for everyone.
In this new modern take, our Annie is a foster kid, not an orphan, and lives in a foster home run by Mrs. Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), a cast-off member of C&C Music Factory who basically hates kids. (The film milks the randomly hilarious C&C Music Factory bit for several jokes). Annie, meanwhile, spends every Friday night waiting outside a small Manhattan restaurant, the last known place her real parents were seen. (She never spots them, but the kindly host always brings her cannoli.)
Jamie Foxx plays this film’s version of Daddy Warbucks, a telecommunications mogul running for mayor of New York named Will Stacks. Rose Byrne plays Will’s right-hand-woman Grace and Bobby Canavale is his unethical campaign manager (is there any other kind?) named Guy.
It’s Guy who decides that taking in a scrappy little orphan will be good for Will’s Q-rating and it’s also Guy who decides that Annie should have her “own” Instagram account, which he uses to tweet staged pictures of Will and Annie interacting.
Of course, you know the rest: The uptight (and germ-phobic) Will gets his heart softened by his temporary charge, and she grows to loves him right back. He even lets her adopt a big yellow dog (not the terrier-ish Sandy we’re used to, but cute all the same). And are those romantic sparks flying between Grace and Will?
In modernizing the musical and bringing it down to earth, director Will Gluck loses a bit of the Broadway show’s pizzazz. Some of the production numbers seem wan, especially “It’s a Hard Knock Life”, which is mostly set in a cramped apartment. Also, I didn’t quite know what to make of a would-be heartwarming scene where Will and Annie fly his helicopter over New York looking for hidden cell towers. (Is this what passes for father-daughter bonding these days?)
On the other hand, the film’s version of “I Think I’m Going to Like It Here” is wonderfully inventive, especially as it features an inspired Stephanie Kurtzuba as Annie’s social worker who makes herself a bit too comfortable in Will’s tricked-out penthouse.
Not all of the cast are great singers (Foxx comes close), but all are good enough (Diaz is particularly game), and Wallis is really such a charmer. She’s a huggable, loveable Annie who doesn’t give you a cavity. Imagine that.