Review: Annie

Let's start with the positive: there can't possibly be a more joyless, shoddily made, terribly acted, clumsily written movie this holiday season than the latest film adaptation of the stalwart stage musical Annie.

When the plucky redheaded orphan was first brought to the screen in 1982, it was generally met with mixed reviews with most critics questioning director John Huston's connection to the material (the legendary helmer was the hardest of men, with a personality and temperament to rival that of Ernest Hemingway) and Martin Charnin, the lyricist of the Tony Award-winning musical, completely dismissing the film version. For all its debated faults, the 1982 film was an arguably entertaining affair with the actors, not all professionally trained, expertly conveying the emotions in the songs' lyrics and choreographer Joe Layton staging wonderful musical numbers. For all the headscratching over Huston, the choice made sense: this was a man who loved underdogs and Little Orphan Annie fits that bill.

Now we have the 2014 version, which updates the Depression Era tale to the present day where the divide between the 1% and the rest of the population is in full effect. Annie (Quvenzhané Wallis) is now one of a handful of foster kids living in a Harlem home run by the mean and pathetic Colleen Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), a failed backup singer drowning her bitterness in alcohol. Daddy Warbucks is now telecommunications billionaire and New York mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), whose accidental rescue of Annie from an oncoming car boosts his sagging popularity with potential voters who view him as "a rich elitist that can't relate to regular people."

Stacks' campaign manager Guy (Bobby Cannavale) seizes on the image-building opportunity, arranging a photo session between Stacks and Annie that ends with self-reliant hustler Annie being housed in Stacks' impressive penthouse. It's not too long before her sunny optimism worms its way into the cockles of the rich man's heart, and sees her well on the road to fulfilling her dreams of a better tomorrow.

It would be an enormous surprise to learn that director Will Gluck had any musical experience since his lack of affinity for even the slightest hint of music is painfully evident. Whatever talents he displayed in his previous films (Easy A, Friends With Benefits) have abandoned him here; his ineptitude extends to his handling of the actors, who are either too broad or too monotonous. Diaz is the most ill-served; her shrieking harridan is a cringe-inducing embarassment.

Wallis, praised for her Oscar-nominated performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild, conveys so little emotion that one is compelled to check her pulse. This blankness proves particularly frustrating in her renditions of "Maybe" and "Tomorrow." In the former, Annie and her fellow orphans wonder about their parents and how they might be, though all the children acknowledge "Their one mistake / Was giving up me!" Wallis completely misses hitting the emotional beat on the word "me" and thoroughly ignores the desperation at the core of the beguilingly cheerful "Tomorrow."

Annie

Directed by: Will Gluck

Written by: Will Gluck, Aline Brosh McKenna; adapted from Thomas Meehan's stage play and based on Harold Gray's comic strip

Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, David Zayas, Stephanie Kurtzuba