If you’ve been reading my writing on this site you know I am a big fan of musicals. However, a musical is a form like any other. It has its highs and its lows. People like to think if I like the form, I like everything within it. Not the case. It would be like saying I like every movie. It is probably the same 30% good/70% bad ratio for any artistic medium. One of the most popular musicals of all time falls in the 70% bad range for me, which is Annie.
The musical has already had a film adaptation directed by John Huston and a TV movie adaptation by Rob Marshall. So, instead of trying their hand at something new (such as trying one of the shows on my top ten musicals that should be made into movies), we will be getting yet another version of this story. The upcoming modernization of the story by Easy A director Will Gluck got its final two trailers today, which you can watch below.
I should say I have a strong bias against stories with precocious kids in them. Everyone else finds these children spunky, fun, and lovable. Me? I just want to dropkick them. Figuratively, of course. Annie is not a compelling character. She is a one-note source of joy everyone else is supposed to feed off of. It really bothers me both in terms of me hating kids and as a character we are supposed to follow. With my previous Annie bias aside, I also just don’t think this looks like a compelling adaptation. One thing I hate more than kids is auto-tune, and it is all over the place here. If you cannot sing the score, you should not play the part. Well, forget that!
The film will be released December 19th, and I will be reluctantly in the theater for it. If it turns out to be as bad as I think it will be, I hope Into the Woods the following week will cleanse my pallet.
You can watch the trailers below:
Academy Award nominee Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) stars as Annie, a young, happy foster kid who’s also tough enough to make her way on the streets of New York in 2014. Originally left by her parents as a baby with the promise that they’d be back for her someday, it’s been a hard knock life ever since with her mean foster mom Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz). But everything’s about to change when the hard-nosed tycoon and New York mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) – advised by his brilliant VP, Grace (Rose Byrne) and his shrewd and scheming campaign advisor, Guy (Bobby Cannavale) – makes a thinly-veiled campaign move and takes her in. Stacks believes he’s her guardian angel, but Annie’s self-assured nature and bright, sun-will-come-out-tomorrow outlook on life just might mean it’s the other way around.
