Annie ***
Beasts of the Southern Wild child star Quvenzhané Wallis drags the character of Annie kicking and screaming into the 21st Century in the 2014 remake. For starters, she often reminds us she’s “not an orphan” but a “foster kid” – a term more commonly recognised these days with unconventional families the norm. She’s still singing and dancing, albeit to more current, ‘street-vamped’ versions of the classic songs but the bare bones are still there for fans.
There is also a heavy use of social media throughout the film – just so you get the point that it’s set in present day. This makes you think, surely, the search for her parents would have been over a lot sooner with all the social platforms at work? Or maybe Annie’s parents aren’t as tech savvy?
The story follows Annie, a foster kid living with washed-up foster mum Miss Colleen Hannigan (Cameron Diaz) and fellow female foster kids in a run-down apartment in Harlem, New York. Each Friday Annie visits an Italian restaurant – the place her parents left her along with a note and half a locket, in the hope they will return to collect her.
Events take a turn for the worse, leading Annie straight into the path of neurotic billionaire businessman Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) who is on the election trail to become New York’s next mayor. What starts out as a press ‘photo opportunity’ to get higher poll ratings, with Stacks spending time with Annie, turns into a father-daughter relationship.
Wallis is a little ray of sunshine in this, instantly loveable as Annie, while sometimes too ‘cookie’ sweet to stomach. However, the latter just goes to annoy the more uptight characters around her in a gleeful way, causing your smile to linger longer than you imagine on more than one occasion.
Initially, Diaz seems like an unlikely (miscast) Hannigan but soon wins you over – she’s as much of a big kid as her charges, and has more of an apparent reason for turning to booze than the original Hannigan. It seems ‘must-have solo gags’ have been added into Diaz’s contract, maybe for the film’s producers, including Jay-Z and the Smiths, Will and Jada, to get their full money’s worth out of the comic star, but these Diaz quips can grate.
Foxx has a lot of fun – and is value for money – as the germophobe Stacks. He also has one of the campiest scenes ever in recent cinematic history, with a singing number performed to Annie high above Manhattan in a helicopter that is beyond cringe – it’s just pain hilarious. Rose Byrne plays smart sidekick Grace, Stack’s long-suffering PA (and love interest), while Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is chauffeur/bodyguard Nash, the modern-day Punjab; the more eagle-eyed of you will spot the homage in the name of the place across the street where Stacks first meets Annie.
There are some interesting socio-economic factors that don’t go a miss; Annie is an African America in deprived inner city area, and although a bright kid, has fallen through the educational cracks and not been taught to read. This point is further highlighted in a charity dance mob scene at the end. Let’s face it, Annie as a story was always a moral consciousness prod.
In the meantime, this film is full of gadgetry (and product placement), from phones to the latest high-tech living arrangements – in case the adult audience members’ interest in the basic story starts to wane. And no current kid’s film would be complete without a saturation of mobile/app/social usage, (lazily) marking out the tension points in the film.
Annie 2014 is almost a mild spoof of the original film. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, though the serious issues simmer below the surface. With running gags – like Stack’s pollen problem to the kleptomaniac social services lady (a crazy turn from Stephanie Kurtzuba), it is meant to be a fun panto time with songs you recognise. It’s a cold-stone heart that doesn’t come out of the cinema with as much as a smile.
3/5 stars
By @FilmGazer
