Annie 1982
I was given a digital copy of Annie, which I was happy to get since it is a classic musical that I have never seen. When I looked up ratings on it though I was surprised how low they were, with a lowly 57% on Rotten Tomatoes and only 39% on Metacritic, indicating that even those who liked it were pretty lukewarm about it. Watching the movie I have to agree. The ingredients are there, but somehow it just doesn’t work. Nothing really draws you in to these characters and most everything is overacted anyway. A lot of it seems like filler including a trip to the movies and a visit with President Roosevelt. Some substantial changes were made from the original musical, including deleting several songs and adding some new ones. One impressive star of the movie is Sandy, a dog that sits still to be sung to and has a surprising number of scenes. Between the large cast of kids and the dog, production couldn’t have been easy. While there are some big production numbers, they are not to the best songs. The main villains, played by Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters, don’t have anything to do until the last 30 minutes of the movie. The cast is capable, but the writing and directing seem to have brought this production down. It has a couple of big songs in “Tomorrow” and “It’s a Hard Knock Life,” but otherwise is pretty unninspiring. Lastly, even though the movie was made in the 80’s, it is very grainy. Even though I was watching in HD, it looked more like a DVD.
Written: 23 Aug 2021
Owned on: Digital