My Review of Annie (1982)

 

Written by Carol Sobieski

Directed by John Huston

Miss Hannigan: "Why any kid would want to be an orphan is beyond me."

Over the next few months (but mostly in December), you can expect a slew of musical movies reviewed and due to real life events, I turned to watching this one last night.

I have watched this movie a ridiculous amount of times and it's one of those movies that I absolutely adore. You've got a red headed orphan named Annie (Aileen Quinn). She's living in the Hudson Street Orphanage in New York City and she wants to find her parents.

In the orphanage, she's got friends such as Molly (Toni Ann Gisondi), Pepper (Rosanne Sorrento), Tessie (Lara Berk), Kate (April Lerman), Duffy (Robin Ignico) and July (Lucie Stewart). They're pretty good friends and along with Annie, they often take great delight in terrorising proprietor, Miss Agatha Hannigan (Carol Burnett). Let's talk about Miss Hannigan.

The woman might not be cut out for looking after orphans but as a character, she's a delight from start to finish. Every scene with her was pure gold to watch. A barely functioning alcoholic with a disastrous nonexistent love life and clear resentment of children, she's also got a hell of a singing voice and apparently, there's lines that she had when it came to scamming billionaires.

The inclusion of Hannigan's criminal brother, Rooster (Tim Curry) and the latter's light fingered girlfriend Lily St. Regis (Bernadette Peters) brought about a moment of morality when Rooster was willing to kill Annie over a ripped check. Rooster's a delightfully dastardly villain that gave the second half of the movie a boost.

Getting back to Annie, she befriended a dog named Sandy and then a nice lady named Grace Farrell (Ann Reinking) decided to bring Annie to stay at billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Albert Finney) house. Over the movie, Daddy Warbucks went from being mildly annoyed by Annie's presence to wanting to adopt her to helping her try to find her parents. 

The tragedy being that Annie's parents were already dead and Rooster and Lily almost got away with pretending to be them in order to scam Warbucks. By the end of the movie, Annie had a brand new life and Miss Hannigan managed to avoid being punished for her part in nearly ruining Annie's new life.

- There's some nice supporting roles for Edward Hermann as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lois de Banzie as Eleanor Roosevelt and Geoffrey Holder as Punjab.

- There's a sequel released in 1995 called Annie: A Royal Adventure with an entirely different cast.

- Annie's parents were killed in a fire when she was a baby. Warbucks mentioned coming from a poor background in Liverpool.

- Annie, Warbucks and Grace went to see Camille in a theatre with the Rockettes performing beforehand.

- Standout music: It's A Hard Knock Life, Dumb Dog, Tomorrow, Little Girls, Sign, You're Never Full Dressed Without A Smile and Finale Reprise of earlier songs.

- Chronology: 1933 New York City during the Great Depression.

Annie (1982) without a doubt is a musical adaptation I'd highly recommend to anyone. I love it so much. The musical numbers are sublime, the main story is brilliant and Miss Hannigan, terrible as she might be, I just think she's a neat character.

Rating: 9 out of 10