Annie 2014

Really? I was kind of disappointed by the trailer. It looks cliche and cheesy to me. It seems more like a remake of Ritchie Rich than Annie. Cameron Diaz just wasn't doing it for me. I'll probably watch when it eventually comes on tv.

Being the grumpy old bastard that I am, I'm going to yet once again swim against the tide and say that I hated the movie when it came out and didn't care much for the updated trailer footage. Granted, it IS a trailer, but even though I like Cameron Diaz and think she has a flair for comedy, this ain't her vehikkle.

Liked the stage play, but I saw it about twenty-five years ago.

I like the comic strip. Worth checking out reprints for anyone into Annie.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1600101402/?tag=absowrit-20

The eyes are a dead giveaway for proving this strip had its heyday in the 30s: by then no one could could afford pupils.

I thought it looked cute. I don't know WTF people are expecting in an Annie movie other than schtick and songs.

Oh, How Cute...

While I'm not a fan of Cameron Diaz or Jamie Foxx, I lurved the little girl (won't even try to spell her name) in Beasts of the Southern Wild.

I'll definitely take my little Goddaughters to see this during their Christmas school break.

Gravity said:

The eyes are a dead giveaway for proving this strip had its heyday in the 30s: by then no one could could afford pupils.

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Why? Why?

Just explain that to me. Why?

Why didn't North Korea hack this movie?

I have quite a few Afro-Caribbean colleagues at work and one of them, about my age told me that she had always been obssessed with Annie. As a little girl, they were producing the play at her school and she was ridiculously excited at playing the role. So on the day of the auditions she went to the hall all ready. She knew every song and every scene in the film. She was the best.

Until the teacher pulled her to one side before the auditions even started and said 'I'm really sorry but you won't be able to audition because you see... well ...Annie's white'.

Now she doesn't care if the film is crap, she's just glad someone had the guts to do it.

Not that Rotten Tomaters is anything to go by, but apparently while 60% of people liked it, it only has a 30% approval rating.

I saw it...wuz disappoint. Wallis is a charming young actress and she really tore into her part, but the whole thing felt, IDK, so staged. Yeah, it's a musical, but it felt totally mechanical, the setup for the next song, and Cameron Diaz, while I like her as a comedic actress, she really was out of her depth with the singing.

Granted, you only need to put it over...but she couldn't. The whole movie to me was a calculated attempt to modernize it. A previous poster referred to it as a homage. If so, it was a desperate one.

mirandashell said:

I have quite a few Afro-Caribbean colleagues at work and one of them, about my age told me that she had always been obssessed with Annie. As a little girl, they were producing the play at her school and she was ridiculously excited at playing the role. So on the day of the auditions she went to the hall all ready. She knew every song and every scene in the film. She was the best.

Until the teacher pulled her to one side before the auditions even started and said 'I'm really sorry but you won't be able to audition because you see... well ...Annie's white'.

Now she doesn't care if the film is crap, she's just glad someone had the guts to do it.

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I haven't seen it and probably won't (was never a fan of the original), but I'm glad it exists for that reason.

I'm sure lots of people underestimate how meaningful such a thing can be.

mirandashell said:

I have quite a few Afro-Caribbean colleagues at work and one of them, about my age told me that she had always been obssessed with Annie. As a little girl, they were producing the play at her school and she was ridiculously excited at playing the role. So on the day of the auditions she went to the hall all ready. She knew every song and every scene in the film. She was the best.

Until the teacher pulled her to one side before the auditions even started and said 'I'm really sorry but you won't be able to audition because you see... well ...Annie's white'.

Now she doesn't care if the film is crap, she's just glad someone had the guts to do it.

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Wow that story sets me into all kinds of rage. And yet white women have been playing non-whites like Cleopatra for years. Not to mention that Exodus movie where all the ancient Egyptians are white.

phantasy said:

Wow that story sets me into all kinds of rage. And yet white women have been playing non-whites like Cleopatra for years. Not to mention that Exodus movie where all the ancient Egyptians are white.

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Well, Cleopatra (I presume you mean Cleopatra VII) was of mostly Macedonian Greek ancestry, but probably darker than Elizabeth Taylor, anyway.

At the time of Rameses II (the historical pharaoh most associated with the Exodus myth), citizens of Egypt included ethnicities ranging from black sub-Saharan Africans (itself a broad category with a lot of variation) to fair-skinned Assyrians, but most of the population had been indigenous to the Nile Valley for a long time. It's hard to pin down a representative phenotype for those folks, but they probably had a fairly broad range of skin tones.

I like colorblind casting in a lot of theatrical productions. (I think all three productions of Macbeth I've seen had black Macduffs.) And it seems to me the character of Annie -- indomitable, resourceful, rising above the prejudices of others -- works perfectly as a black kid. Anyway, I can't imagine what that teacher was thinking about.

kuwisdelu said:

I haven't seen it and probably won't (was never a fan of the original), but I'm glad it exists for that reason.

I'm sure lots of people underestimate how meaningful such a thing can be.

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Oh. Oh! Just so people don't misinterpret my above post as something it wasn't, I did not know this Annie was black until just now. That is pretty interesting.

Its still Annie though.

I loved the original growing up, and I introduced it to my daughter who also fell in love with it. We're both looking forward to seeing it over the Christmas break. Not even embarrassed by it! I'm interested to see how they modernized it. The only negative reviews I've heard were about some of the singing.

Wife and daughter and I went to see this earlier this week. I really enjoyed it. I went in not expecting it to be the 82 version, which is the only one I know. It was fun, just like that one.

I've only ever seen the theatrical version (well, one of them, I suppose), when I was a kid.

I saw the trailer for this in the theatre and it looked abominable. The only reviews I've seen have basically gone that direction, so I wasn't interested. Interesting a fan of the original movie liked it so much.

It seemed so deep into the precocious, overly self-aware-but-not thing in the trailer, like the whole movie was Will Smith and family, writ large.

Back in the mid-1980s, I saw two stage plays the same day: 1) Zoe Caldwell starring in Medea (front row; $6); 2) Annie starring whatever kid was currently blowing out her growing vocal cords in the touring company (about fifty yards from the stage, for, if I recall, $20). One of those was a real bargain.

Well, took DD and saw the movie with my sister-in-law and 2 nieces. We really enjoyed it! It of course was very different than the original movie, but I liked the way it was updated.

My poor daughter sobbed near the end. She's seen the original several times, so she knew the story. And she knew it would end up "happily ever after" in the end. But man, that poor girl was audibly sobbing, angry at the lies she knew were being told to Annie.

I cried a bit then as well, and we all cried happy tears at the end.

But then again, my SIL and I both cried during the preview for Little Boy.

I was a fan of the 80s movie.

Took my 12-year-old son. He really liked it. We danced around the kitchen to "Hard Knock Life" afterwards.