Annie – 4 Stars (Excellent)
“Annie” is without a doubt one of the most uplifting, heartbreaking, and positive Broadway musicals in movie history.
Even if you didn’t see Annie as a movie buff, you’d recognize the keywords from her award-winning title track “Tomorrow”: “The sun will come up tomorrow, so you’ve got to hang on until tomorrow. Whatever happens. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you, Tomorrow.” You’re only one day away.”
Based on Thomas Meehan’s musical score of the hugely successful play and Carol Sobieski’s screenplay, Annie was directed by John Houston in his first and last effort directing a musical film. None of his talents were wasted.
Shout out to Carol Sobieski’s effort with the script, as I think her feminine touch had a lot to do with the final product. Annie is reminiscent of Harold Gray’s Annie comic strip, but there was nothing from the original comic strip that could have been used in the musical. Sobieski also wrote “Fried Green Tomatoes.”
Set in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Annie’s life among orphans in squalid conditions changes dramatically when she is selected to spend a week at the mansion of Oliver Warbucks, a wealthy munitions industrialist driven only by making money and with the intention of polishing his capitalist picture.
Annie (performed magnificently by Aileen Quinn) becomes an irresistible force and immediately commands attention as simple and unassuming in a situation of affluence, power and influence dominated by Daddy Warbucks (Albert Finney is at his best in this role ). She wins the hearts of everyone in the house, apart from Grace Farrell (Ann Reinking), Warbucks’ right-hand woman.
Despite everyone’s growing affection for Annie’s childlike simplicity, Daddy Warbucks’ decision to adopt Annie is met with trauma, as Annie is only concerned with finding her parents so she can be part of a royal family.
Enter the stern and cruel owner of the orphanage, Miss Hannigan (an excellent character performance from the one and only Carol Burnett), her baddie brother Rooster Hannigan (Tim Curry) and his girlfriend Lily St. Regis (Bernadette Peters). They conspire to kidnap Annie and Rooster tries to kill her. After some tense moments during a major movie making, Daddy Warbucks’ skilled enforcer Punjab (Geoffrey Holder) comes to the rescue.
Don’t miss the role of fellow orphan Molly (played by Toni Ann Gisondi), the helicopter that Daddy Warbucks flies in, and the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. Both Carol Burnett and Aileen Quinn were nominated for the Golden Globes for Best Actress.
The original stage play Annie opened in 1977, won the Tony Award for Best Musical the same year, and closed in 1983 after 2,377 performances. Annie hit the big screen in 1982 and remains a classic among Broadway musicals. The rights to Annie sold in 1978 for $9.5 million (over $30 million in today’s dollars), a record that still stands.
Annie is everything good and right about a Broadway musical turned into a movie. Annie teaches the adults around her the importance of love, family, kindness, kindness, gratitude, understanding, optimism and hope, all of which she was missing in her life as an orphan.
Copyright © 2009 Ed Bagley
