I'm not watching this movie again · 3:34am Jan 1st, 2015
EVER
Ok so when I was like 5 I saw the 1982 film version of Annie. I remember hardly anything except really liking the number "It's a Hard Knock Life", there was a giant shaggy dog, and Annie had a mop of red hair. So I can't rate 2014's version as a reboot/remake of that film or an adaptation of the Broadway musical or the 1890s comic strip that inspired it (that's right--Annie was a comic strip first. So does that mean she could make an appearance in a Marvel or DC film too?)
All I can tell you is what I thought of what was presented to me on a camrip. Btw thank you to whoever person betrayed the trust of the For Your Consideration people to bring me this high-quality rip. No matter the film you guys are my heroes.
And I can tell you that I hate this movie more than I hated Exodus: Gods and Kings. You see Exodus spat in the face of my spiritual identity but it couldn't really hurt it, God is bigger than Mr. Scott's warped view of Him and I've never required Hollywood's endorsement of my beliefs. So in my view it just came across offensive but ultimately pathetic, like a toddler throwing a tantrum over not getting a cookie.
2014's Annie is different.
Annie hurt me.
This film is the most ignorantly hypocritical, exploitatively self-righteous and repulsively disingenuous piece of work I have ever seen.
I imagine this film is the equivalent of what Bard the Bowman experienced in The Hobbit films experience while being condescended to by that smarmy Grima Wormtounge knockoff
this slimy, foul and repugnant sense of being forced to endure the domineering of someone clearly ignorant and utterly small-minded lording their very shortcomings over you while you are completely helpless to defy them.
No no, that's not evocative enough: This movie is the equivalent of listening to someone preach the virtues of Scientology for 118 minutes.
And because this movie has dreged up all my frothing rage and bitterness for the human race y'all is gonna sit and listen to me sink my fangs into this and tear it in a thousand pieces.
That's right, feel my rage.
F E A R M Y R A G E
So...
...Annie has to do with a horrendously stereotypical PC cast suddenly breaking into terrible synthesized and auto-tuned numbers that their stiff and awkward lip-syncing only enforce the massive gap between the set were they performed and the studio were they recorded. There isn't a single song number that I for a solitary nanosecond believed a lyric they spoke, they might as well have been humming along to a song on their iPod they didn't even know the lyrics to for as much emotion as they conveyed.
The closest thing to a catchy musical moment was in the very first five minutes of the film when our distinctly non-redheaded Annie (though in her defense Quvenzhané Wallis's Afro rather does resemble the shape and size of the original Annie's blood-colored fuzz) produces a spontaneously Stomp-like performance from her fellow schoolmates. It lasts like, what, a minute? A minute thirty on the outside maybe?
It had a part when Annie went walking through her classroom and when she touched each one of them they would break out into laughter (as per the song numbers requirements) so it made it look like she was Saint Peter or something and slaying them in the Spirit.
There's no actual dancing in the movie either, just some very uncomfortable and cramped dodging and jumping from one grounded piece of the set to the other, so it looks about as rehearsing and rhythmic as a group of disoriented actors tripping over vague direction. It all makes Carlton's dance look like Bob Fossi I swear.
The editing is probably the worst I've ever seen, I mean seriously I've seen MST3K riff movies with better editing than this. Character's expressions change like the Comedy and Tragedy masks from one camera angle to another. It feels as if Edward Scissorhands had a meltdown and went at it.
But anyways I guess the lack of legitimate music in this musical means I am compelled to speak of the story and consequently the characters.
The director should be jailed for robbery because he stole the acting ability from his exceptionally talented cast. Or perhaps he sucked it out with some super technology device to full his immortality, I don't know whichever excuse helps you sleep at night I guess.
Jamie Foxx is gratingly plastic in his role as Daddy Warbucks---oh excuse me, I meant Will Stacks because that name is oh so much less contrived (at least Daddy Warbucks has nostalgia factor and cultural osmosis as an excuse, your weak name just sounds like a lifelong misfortune and that your momma hated you).
In this version he's a business man whose running for mayor just so he can expand his business (like seriously isn't there an easier way to do that than add more work to your plate, work that will certainly take precedent and distract from your business?) but is so absurdly and unrealistically squeamish around people that he makes Monk
look like Jordan Belfort
And like it makes no sense because it's established later that he grew up a dirt poor kid from Queens who worked his fingers to the bone to get to the top so being ashamed of his past sure I get that but turning into a proto-version of Howard Hughes?
And it's only played up very early in the film after that he acts in a more classically rich-man kind of manner, distant, dismissive, and demanding.
Quvenzhané Wallis as Annie is probably the most heinous example of quashed talent. At the age of five she starred in the mindbogglingly magnificent Beasts of the Southern Wild which earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars alongside the powerhouses and favorites Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Emmanuelle Riva, and Naomi Watts. At the time of the ceremony the woman in competition with her the closest to her age was Lawrence at 22, twelve years older than Wallis.
(Look at that--she was F I V E ladies and gentlemen!)
If you didn't know any of the above coming into this movie though, you would have assumed Little Miss Wallis was a product of a grade B Disney channel sitcom. In this film you can almost hear the director from behind the screen shouting: "Ok now look sad! Now happy again, real quick!" Every action and facial expression is the most hackneyed and counterfeit, like a wooden marionette being yanked about by an inept puppeteer. There is no childlike charm or wonder in her performance, it's a painful exhibition of a cynical adult's perspective on how a child should appear rather than how they are in reality or how they should to engage us in fiction.
The supporting cast all look as if they really wanted to be in this movie, perhaps deceived into thinking they would have a chance to take part in the joy of a classic or bring some fresh spin to the materiel. None of them can rise above it, though bless their sad little souls they did try terribly hard.
Rose Byrne attempts to bring some English charm (though she is in fact Australian) to her role as Jamie Foxx's secretary who, going again with the Monk analogy, is basically his Sharona or Natalie, his caretaker for all intents and purposes since he needs to be guided through every action in his life because despite being a self-made man he is somehow incapable of dealing with the basics of life such a social situations, communication, and interaction.
All this she must direct him in despite the fact that she herself is clearly a social oddity herself being a young, attractive woman with a degree from Oxford, a lovely accent and good taste in clothing who still has no friends, no major relationship or hints to even past ones, barely any contact with her parents, and perceives radio talk shows (political ones? social ones? entertainment ones? never stated) as "soothing" and as a child felt the hosts were "her friends".
Also she apparently has the hots for her boss although they share minimal screen-time together and none that establishes the substance of their bond as boss and employee much less in a romantic sense. Their kiss at the end is so contrived and fake that it made the kissing from the Twilight movies seem like Last Tango in Paris.
Cameron Diaz plays the part of the foster mother Hannigan and if the people making this film thought a story set in Depression era America about a plucky young girl living in a Oliver Twist-esque orphanage wouldn't translate to a modern audience I can't image what mindset they were in except willful laziness, hypocrisy and crassness if they thought having Diaz portray this woman with five girls under the age of 14 in her care as a verbally abusive, neglectful drunk and junkie who attempts to harlot herself to any man who appears at her door would somehow render comically on screen in the 21st century.
It is strange to say but a over-the-top performance actually does take some tact and subtly from the performer the best examples I can think of are Raul Julia in Street Fighter
David Bowie in Labyrinth
and Eva Green in 300: Rise of an Empire.
All of them gave performances which hinge on them gorging on the scenery and making savage love to the camera but each comes across as strikingly authentic in each respective film. You honestly believe that Julia is a megalomaniac dictator bent on world domination
that Bowie is a supernatural king of a fantastical realm prone to playing mind games with young women
and Green is the warmongering naval captain of a evil empire set on the destruction of Greece
You feel the weight and impact of their claims and their actions, never does their melodramatic delivery or affect mannerism take you out of the mystic of the film, instead it fuels it, and becomes the center in which the film holds your imagination.
Yeah, Diaz's performance is the opposite of all that.
She has zero charisma or balance in her characterization, just flinging herself sloppy across the set, mugging painfully into the camera, and squawking like a hyperventilating turkey. She is too pathetic to take as a serious threat but some of her lines are so virulently savage (in her introductory scene she snarls drunkenly at Annie that nobody will want to adopt her because she isn't a good girl) that you can't help loathe her.
It makes her "redemption arc" aka a literal last second flip of her entire established character not only implausible but undesired, especially since the event that causes her to abruptly change is rooted in rewarding her abominable nature.
Explanation: She is such a nasty person because she once was a singer but was fired (it's never stated why but given what we're shown it's utterly understandable) and now she's fostering children merely for the state paycheck. Then Jamie Foxx tells her that Annie always thought her singing was nice. That instantaneously causes her to now want to be a "nice girl" again, though she never is seen apologizing to any of the girls or mourning her behavior except for a a few verses in a song with barely 20 minutes left of the movie.
Am I supposed to be glad that this horrific woman who regularly and without any moral compunction abused and exploited five young girls under her care for years is "redeemed" merely by having her destructive ego vaguely boosted?
The real "villain" of the story is Foxx's campaign manager Guy (Bobby Cannavale), who convinces Foxx's character that to help his public image he should let Annie stay at his house after Foxx inadvertently saved her from being hit by a truck.
I don't know how in a modern society where every imitate and private aspect of politicians' life is investigated and unveiled how they thought they could convince the public that Foxx truly cared for this child despite the fact that he was intending to return to her inhuman living conditions or how Diaz's character's abuse was hidden from them either when Annie is shown as being a manipulatively business-minded individual (because what we all want to see is 10 year olds acting like disenchanted and mercenary 30 year olds amirite???)
In the end Guy serves kinda like a metaphor for this film itself. He sees everything in life as merely another steppingstone on the ladder to more money (he blatantly states all he is aiming at is being richer despite having being born into a sinfully rich family already) and is willing to exploit, manipulate, and destroy anything and everything that crosses his path to ensure he gets to his goal faster. And isn't that what this entire movie reeks of?
The changing of the cast's race is only utilized as a ploy to throw in "timely" topics such as the poor vs the rich and the flawed education and foster system because of course white people don't experience hardships like poverty, lack of education or foster care whereas the black community is simply filled with nothing but such sad cases.
And to anyone who says it's about quote unquote representation firstly
And secondly representation means nothing if what you are displaying is the thin stereotypes of a race, gender, religion, culture or policy. The cast's color is used here as a buzzword in the same why it was employed in a slave auction to attract buyers: POOR UNEDUCATED BLACK PEOPLE FEEL FOR THEIR UNFORTUNATE AND HELPLESS STATE.
I don't care for a character because of their race or gender, I only am interested in if they are a good character and that means they must either be charismatic enough to enjoy or complex enough to engage or both. Isn't going to see a movie solely based on the actor's skin color enforcing the original root of the stereotype that certain people are only worthy of interest or concern because of the amount of pigmentation their genetics allowed? Last time I checked what Dr. King actually said at his "I have a dream" speech was:
So if your character is foul, you'll be treated as such and vice versa.
This movie's character is an inept use of buzzwords to fool us into sitting down and watching it's offensively base attempt at modernizing a classic by pumping as much soulless materialism and shallowness on screen as possible.
(My mother will kill me for that gif but it was needed.)
Knew this movie would suck when I saw the commercial. Good news is you never have to watch it again
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Well...glad to know I didn't see THAT.
No, Annie is a comic strip, not a comic book. Whole different ball game. She did get to team-up with Dick Tracy once, though.
And what the director utilized is generally known as talent bending. He probably learned it from Shamalyan.