ANNIE
DIRECTOR: Will Gluck
CAST: Jamie Foxx, Quvenzhané Wallis, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Cameron Diaz, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
CLASSIFICATION: PG
RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes
RATING: ***
When would-be New York mayoral candidate and business tycoon, Will Stacks (Foxx), saves a child from being knocked over by a truck, his spin doctor decides to leverage all the sudden goodwill. Oily, smarmy, but oh-so-good at his job, Guy Cannavale) persuades Stacks to take the child under his wing and photo opps ensue.
Throw in a dog from a shelter and we are A for okay.
Twitter and Instagram love her, the press are eating it up, and despite himself Stacks unwinds enough to realise he actually likes this very, very cute kid, Annie (Wallis).
Unfortunately, this is not an adaptation but a straight-on remake of the original musical turned film and, as such, it is surprisingly bland. We could have forgiven the director for cribbing the storyline because originality is not exactly expected from the Hollywood sausage factory. There are even some adaptations that have surprised us – think Clueless (1995) taking its cue from Jane Austen’s Emma.
But turning this into Annie with black people is a disservice to the talents of Foxx and Wallis (Oscar-nominated for her debut in Beasts of the Southern Wild), as well as their supporting cast.
Foxx looks as stiff and uncomfortable in the film as his character does around regular folk. Wallis, though, is super cute and natural as the irrepressible Annie.
Every time people burst into song it just feels tacked on. Singing something is supposed to indicate an abundance of emotion, making the character shift up performance mode (Amy Adams does a great job of explaining it in the witty Enchanted). Here, the action stops as yet another singing montage is flung at the screen, and pained people over-act. Diaz especially puts in an over-the-top performance as the foster mother with issues.
The weirdest part about this unnecessary remake is how Annie is made to celebrate the material things that being in Stacks’s care gives her, rather than the love a family provides, which was what she wants. Or what she wanted in the original, at least.
On the plus side, Wallis does get to sing with Foxx, so that’s worth something, ain’t it? The two songs which have been added to the very recognisable soundtrack though, don’t really stand out at all.
The film makes it to three stars simply for a hilarious scene in which Stacks takes the kids to watch a movie, which is a most brilliant Twilight parody, called MoonQuake Lake. Check out the fake trailer, it is up there with the fake trailer for Pineapple Express 2 in This Is The End.
If you are wondering who the audience is for this version of Annie – do you know anyone who can sing all the Frozen songs without having to reference the actual movie anymore?
If you liked Super Buddies or Night at the Museum 3 you will like this.
Fake trailers bring real laughter
The amount of time and energy that went into creating the clips for the Twilight parody MoonQuake Lake, the film within a film in Annie, reminds us of the fun of creating fake trailers and clips.
Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, MoonQuake Lake got its own trailer and website and even a Sia and Beck song last month. It didn’t take too long before people realised that it was a fake, but come on, that 37-second trailer featuring Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher in a fantasy romance with Rihanna as a blue-toothed monster, we’re talking epic spoof territory here.
Annie is not the only film to use the concept – Quenton Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did so to memorable effect with their fake trailers for their Grindhouse films. While Machete did not quite live up to the hype promised by the trailer – which totally used all the moneyshots – directors like Eli Roth and Joe Wright had more fun coming up with the ideas than we did watching them.
There are several other films which use the same concept, but the ones that do it best are those which totally buy into the iconic language of trailers, faithfully imitating the genre’s tropes and cliches.
Tropic Thunder (2008) featured several trailers, including The Fatties: Fart 2 which was a Jack Black comedy about obesity, farts and burps. Basically it was an Eddie Murphy movie, but in under a minute.
Or, how about Ben Stiller as the ultimate action hero in Scorched VI: Global Meltdown. Stiller’s action man Tugg Speedman saves the day again… again. This time, holding not one, but TWO babies.
Scrooged (1988) starts with a montage of some of the movies Bill Murray’s character plans to screen over the Christmas period, including The Night the Reindeer Died. The totally inappropriate tv movie is about terrorists attacking Santa’s workshop and killing the reindeer. Luckily Lee Majors saves the day.
In Scary Movie, which is a spoof of Scream, there’s a fake trailer which starts all Titanic, but then turns into a sequel of Steven Spielberg’s slavery drama, Amistad II.
In How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008), Megan Fox’s character Sophie Maes gives a new take on the sainthood in Mother Teresa: The Making of a Saint. Sexualising and Americanising the real nun gives us a NC-17 trailer in an effort for some viral marketing.
While Last Action Hero (1993) – starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fictional character within a film franchise – is itself a satire of action movies, containing parodies of several action movies with several films within the film, the best one has to be Hamlet. Yes, that would be Schwarzenegger doing Shakespeare.
For more, check out the Funny or Die website, the place which first debuted the Grampires: When Sharon Bit Harry clip, aka When Harry Met Sally II. Or check out CollegeHumor.com which is where you first caught a glimpse of the trailer for Dora the Explorer: The Movie (with Ariel Winter).