MSN - Film Review by Ronnie Scheib : ‘Annie’ - "overblown yet undernourished"

Film Review: ‘Annie’



"Featuring a multiracial all-star cast"  

Judging by the photo of the kid performers, it looks like at least one race slipped their minds, perhaps an accurate predictor of our celebrated demographic 'Tomorrow!' --tma

While there are several possible good reasons to remake the Depression-set musical “Annie” in 2014, none of them seem to have informed Will Gluck’s overblown yet undernourished treatment. More of a facelift than an update, the pic dusts off some old songs, adds a few desultory stabs at new ones, and stuffs the frame with shiny upscale gadgets that scream “modern.” Featuring a multiracial all-star cast with few pretensions to dancing expertise, the film replaces choreography with metronomic editing, while one-note overstatement drowns out character development. Even without the Sony hacking scandal that caused it to leak online early, “Annie” would seem headed for a lackluster Christmas bow.

The film begins promisingly with a pre-credits sequence wherein Gluck acknowledges the obvious parallel between the Great Depression and the currently widening rich/poor divide: A schoolroom show-and-tell produces a standard-issue, red-haired “Annie A,” only to replace her with an afro’d “Annie B” (Quvenzhane Wallis, the Academy Award-nominated waif from “Beasts of the Southern Wild”). Wallis’ Annie proceeds to conduct the class in an interactive historical performance piece celebrating FDR’s New Deal, no less. But this hint of modern-day hard times, it turns out, is evoked only to be treated as a quaint conceit. ...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/reviews/film-review-%E2%80%98annie%E2%80%99/ar-BBgN9LE?ocid=U142DHP