Rating: 
Summary: "Annie" is superb!
Review: "Charmless and dull"??? What planet are you on?
This movie is superb, complete with great stars and terrific musical score. It's definitely a classic, to be enjoyed many times -- one to share with family and friends.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Knock Film!!!
Review: This has to one of the all time favorites in the "Annie" series, and it's based on the smash hit Broadway musical. This plucky, red-haired girl, who dreams of a life outside her dingy orphanage, Annie (played by Aileen Quinn), plans several escapes but is always foiled by the gin-soaked ruler of the orphanage.Miss Hannigan (played wonderfully and wickedly by Carol Burnett), is the arch-nemesis of this young girl and her other friends in the orphanage. Filled with an ensemble cast worth a grand memory, we have Albert Finney (Daddy Warbucks), Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters as the villainous duo, and Edward Hermann as FDR. A grand entertaining movie!! It's wonderful, and the music is superb!!! A real uplifting experience!!!
Rating:
Summary: This movie is the best!!!
Review: This has been my favorite movie since I was 2 and saw it in the theater with my mom and dad. I still watch it often and it reminds me of when I was a little girl belting out "Tomorrow" in my orange Annie wig. It's just a great classic movie that anybody can watch.
Rating:
Summary: Positivly great!
Review: This movie really great. See it!
Rating:
Summary: "The Greatest Of All Times" - not Muhammed Ali :)
Review: This movie has been my favorite since I first saw it on NBC in 1984. My aunt recorded it for me, but over the years it was recorded over. My husband knows this is my favorite movie, so he tried to surprise me with Annie for Valentine's Day last year. Unfortunately he bought the "new" Annie. It was okay, but not like the original. Seeing the extra footage of the original Annie movie made me love it even more! Great for the kids too!!
Rating:
Summary: This Movie Is Good!
Review: I liked both this movie and the play, yes it's kind of annoying that they didn't use several cute songs from the play and when I first saw this movie I was disappointed but over the years I have grown to like the movie even more even if I wish it included the missing songs and I have to say that even though the play was good some of the reviewers here who loved the play and hated this movie are making the play out to be something totally amazing, yes it's good but it's not absolutely fantastic like Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Siagon, Cats, but that's just my personal opinion.
Rating:
Summary: I love this movie
Review: OMG! words can begin to explain how i feel about this movie. Ever i since i was a little girl i could not go to bed with out watching annie. Even now, i watch it to remmeber my childhood.I have watche dit so much that my tape is about to break that's why i bought it on dvd. when i saw the new annie that was made i thought as a annie fanatic that they total [messed] it up.This is a must buy!!
thanks
little oporfin annie( J )
Rating: 
Summary: THE SUN HAS COME OUT FOR THIS FUNLOVING FILM!
Review: Based on the comic strip, "Little Orphan Annie" which later became a Broadway show that, of course, finally became a big budget movie, "Annie" is the 1981 musical from producer Ray Stark and director John Huston. Odd, that neither had much experience with the musical genre until this film. Some of their inexperience shows up on the screen. The dance numbers are butchered in the editing and some good talent, though competent in their roles, are wasted nevertheless with a genuinely simple handling of the subject matter. But what about the transfer - Columbia has made the film available in both full frame and the original widescreen format, enhanced here for 16X9 televisions. For the purposes of film purists, this review will concentrate on the widescreen version of the film. Colors are rich and nicely balanced. Blacks are sometimes weak but nothing that leads to any great disappointment. However, there are some framing issues, specifically during the "Let's Go To The Movies" musical number in which it appears as though someone has accidentally reframed a full screen version of this sequence, instead of using the 2:35:1 aspect ratio image. Actor's heads are cut off and there is some interfield jittering as the camera pans to capture the action. Otherwise, the rest of the film appears to have the proper widescreen image framed. The ending of this movie is still its best part, with a gala party at the Warbuck's mansion yielding rich colors and bold blacks. Fine grain, dirt, chips and scratches inherent in the original camera negative are visible but not distracting. Some scenes are softly focused but again, these are brief. The stereo soundtrack 2.0 is ample but scratchy in spots and strident with a slight hiss in others. No great shakes overall but still worth the price for those who truly love this tuneful, though at times top heavy, musical motion picture. As pure film, this version is still better than Disney's direct to video remake.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, guilty pleasure...
Review: Now, I usually give a minimum of stars to poorly done movies, but some films are so distinctively, exquistely, deliciously ... that they are enjoyable enough to receive 5 stars. No one movie exemplifies this sort of film more than ANNIE. 50's B-movies? Too obviously bad. Parodies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Too aware of their cleverness. Only Annie blends all the elements of corniness to perfectly form a wonderfully, decadently bad movie.
From the opening scene with that small red-haired child lamenting in a self-indulgent display of musical depression to the closing scene involving small tap-dancing orphans, horses and fireworks, Annie is an amazing display of cheese.
The plot, as you must already know, centers around the delightfully irritating lil' orphan Annie (played to annoying perfection by that wee child never to do anything ever again, Aileen Quinn), a spunky little orphan with a will of iron and a heart of gold, who is, against the odds, chosen by the head of the household of the inconceivably wealthy Oliver Warbucks (Albert Finney brilliantly mastered the art of "hrumph"ing) to stay at his New York mansion for one week-- and one week only. While at first "Daddy" Warbucks is insensitive to the young girl's plight, but after a while she starts to warm his little greedy heart. The rest of the cast also plays this movie out splendidly, including the anal retentive, prudish Grace Farrell (played by Ann Reinking) who hyperventilates when Annie tells her she has never played tennis, and who has such intellectually stimulating lines as "Oh, fiddle faddle!", and the incompetent Molly (played by Toni Ann Gisondi) who has not the ability to sing, dance (she tries, oh, Lord, she tries), nor cry on cue.
And that's not all. No, no, that's not even the beginning. Watch and you'll see such historically accurate portraits such as the happy, bouncy, (and for some reason completely white) world of 1930s New York, and how a (possibly) mentally deficient red-headed munchkin inspired Franklin Delano Roosevelt to (gasp!) end the Great Depression. Where else will you see FDR, Eleanor, a frightening bald man and a perky little child singing a gratingly catchy inspirational tune around a portrait of George Washington? No where else, that's where.
The music is catchy and easy to learn, so opportunities for parody are limitless. Plot holes and filming mistakes are abundant enough to be funny but not obvious enough to be pretentiously aware of their corniness.
I wish I could give it more stars. What else is there to say?
Rating:
Summary: For heaven's sake, be a kid again!
Review: Okay, you lofty critics, come down from your tower.
Having grown up with the original broadway cast recording until the movie came along (whereupon I instantly changed my allegiance), I am surprised that anyone could accuse Aileen Quinn's impressive singing as being too forceful, in comparison with the original stage actress, who, apparently devoid of any notion of musical dynamics, nasally belted out her songs like a pipe organ at full steam. The musical numbers that were removed (NYC, Hooverville, etc) were primarily the ones that went right over kids' heads anyway - what modern seven-year-old knows or cares about the Depression? - and were rightly taken out to prevent boredom in the film's intended demographic target. This may have resulted in less depth of setting, but I do not think it makes the movie any less enjoyable - on the contrary, it lightens things up considerably, if only the viewer can remove the purist chip from his elevated shoulder. Simply admit that this film is a charming, light-hearted romp through smashing choreography, catchy tunes, and a bit of shmaltz pulled off with finesse by a perfectly-cast group of actors, and you have a film that will captivate your kids, and you, if you can grant yourself their innocence for a couple of hours.
Note: one of my favorite things about this movie version is that it gives Annie her red mop of curls for the entire movie, rather than having her unexplained transformation at the end (I presume just to identify her with the pre-existing cartoon character). No other version does this. A petty bone of contention, perhaps, but one to gnaw nevertheless.
|
