ANNIE: A Sickening Experience That Gets Worse Everytime Someone Sings

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

ANNIE (Dir. Will Gluck, 2014)

This new re-imagined adaptation of the 1977 musical “Annie” really made me see red. It’s a crassly commercial, hard-to-stomach, shameless spectacle that reduces the story points of the original into annoying contrivances, while it covers every actor and actress involved in unbearable ickiness.

Quvenzhané Wallis, who I liked so much better when she was Hushpuppy who lived with her daddy in the Bathtub, is our new updated African American Annie, now a foster child instead of an orphan. Wallis lives with other foster children with the mean alcoholic Miss Hannigan (an obnoxiously over-the-top Cameron Diaz) in Harlem, where she dreams that her real parents will come back to retrieve some day. Tomorrow, maybe?

Daddy Warbucks is now William “Will” Stacks played by Jamie Foxx, who seems fairly uncomfortable in the role. Wallis’ Annie and Foxx’s Stacks cross paths when he saves her from an oncoming car, an event that, of course, goes viral. As he’s in the middle of a campaign for Mayor of New York City, it’s decided by Foxx’s handlers (Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale), that Annie should come live with him in his bling heavy smart apartment (a smartment?).

What part of that plot description doesn’t make you want to vomit?

Wallis may or not be a decent singer, but I couldn’t tell with how auto-tuned every vocal is in every over-produced musical number. I’m pretty certain that Diaz, Cannavale, and especially Byrne shouldn’t be allowed to sing though. Foxx, is without a doubt the most talented vocalist here but he sure doesn’t seem like he’s giving it his all – his song “The City’s Yours” delivered in a helicopter hovering over the Big Apple really falls flat. It’s a performance that might as well be Skyped in.

I was not a fan of the 1982 ANNIE, directed by John Huston no less, but this plastic atrocity makes it look like THE GODFATHER. In that now elevated film, Daddy Warbucks (Albert Finney) takes Annie (Aidan Quinn, now residing in the where are they now file) to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes and the 1936 classic CAMILLE.

In this awful update, Foxx takes Wallis to a movie premiere of a fictitious TWILIGHT-type production entitled “MoonQuake Lake,” featuring cameos by Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, and Rihanna. This is only notable because it’s the rare example of an awful film within an awful film.

While suffering through this new fangled ANNIE, I remembered something I hadn’t thought about for a long time. My first major girlfriend had played “Annie” in a long run at the Governor’s Inn in the Research Triangle Park here in NC in the ‘80s. Her dog was even named “Sandy.” I think she told me she had also auditioned for the movie, which I’m not sure about as I probably wasn’t listening (I was a bad boyfriend) but she was the same age as Quinn who won the role so it surely seems plausible.

Anyway, as this was a long ass relationship that ended badly, I admit that this might make me biased against the whole Annie thing, but I doubt even without that factor, that I’d take to this new crappy retooling in any way shape or form.

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Hushpuppy’s spirit shines through the murkiness of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
(Dir. Benh Zeitlin, 2012)

Meet Hushpuppy, a six-year old girl in the near future who has to grow up fast, what with the waters rising through the flooded terrain of her homeland, her mother gone missing, her father suffering from a severe illness, and a heard of prehistoric creatures (aurochs) approaching who just thawed out from the melting icecaps.

Like in a lot of tales of environmental collapse, the how and whys are put aside, and we’re left with the daily struggle for survival.

And Hushpuppy, as played by the plucky Quvenzhané Wallis, seems like she can hold her own in what they call the “the Bathtub,” a fictional Louisiana bayou which has been obviously hit by something a lot bigger than Hurricane Katrina.

Hushpuppy’s fierce father (a greatly invested Dwight Henry) practices tough love in hopes of strengthening his daughter’s resolve. Wallis and Henry’s scenes together, usually in tight dark cheap confines, sear in the psyche as much or more than the imagery of the harsh elements surrounding them.

The eerie, but more often powerfully uplifting, score by director Zeitlin and Dan Romer enhances much of the movie, with a throbbing thrust that helps us maneuver through what its often very uncomfortable material.

There is an undeniable murkiness to the narrative, with maybe too much shaky cam action, but Wallis’s spirit provides something strong to latch onto. She’s an actress who is definitely going places, and whether one connects with this film (I just barely did – I more admired it than I enjoyed it), her performance is a piece of raw beauty and one every film fan should experience.

Although her narration throughout the film can be cloying, when Wallis states that “the scientists of the future will know once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her daddy in the bathtub,” you definitely believe her.

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