Revising Annie

I’m an English teacher, so it probably goes without saying that I’m a big fan of revision. I love watching a student’s first draft unfold and develop, becoming something new and unexpected in its second, third, and fourth versions. Even very good writers who write strong first drafts often end up creating something more interesting when they’re willing to write another version.

Because of the pleasure I take in well-done revision, I rarely dismiss a movie remake or reboot out of hand. Even though my faith isn’t always rewarded, hope springs eternal, and I’m usually excited to see what a new creative team might bring to a familiar story or set of characters. For instance, I know a lot of Trekkie purists weren’t impressed with J.J. Abrams take on Star Trek, but I was thrilled by it. (At least the first one.) I enjoyed seeing how Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and especially Karl Urban captured the essence of the original characters while still making them their own and modernizing them. (Karl Urban’s version of the ever-crabby McCoy was pitch perfect.)

Sometimes a writer/director will come along and make something greater than the original. Put the 1958 version of The Fly up against David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake, for example, and I know which one will haunt you for weeks to come. If someone had shot down Cronenberg’s film just because it’s a remake, the world would have missed out on one of the most unsettling horror films of the 80s and one of that director’s most mainstream works. The same could be said for Scorcese’s Cape Fear, John Carpenter’s The Thing, or DePalma’s Scarface. So we can’t dismiss remakes and reboots out of hand.

 I tried to approach the remake of the musical Annie with the heart of an English teacher eager for a creative revision rather than with the jaundiced eye of a movie critic who might just see it as a yet another cheap ploy to squeeze more box office out of an already-established property.

The question of revision is always “What is new? What is better?” So what’s new or improved about the new version of Annie? There’s plenty that’s new, not a lot that’s improved. The film leaves its FDR-Great-Depression era setting in favor of the 21^st century. The cast, instead of being entirely white (with the exception of the manservant Punjab) is now more racially diverse. Daddy Warbucks, the wartime profiteer, becomes Will Stacks, the cell phone magnate and mayoral candidate. Annie is now in a foster home rather than an orphanage. The original songs from the Broadway musical have been amped up with base-heavy backbeats and several new songs have been written in order to fit the new narrative. Miss Hannigan, once terrifyingly and hilariously played by Carol Burnett, is now Cameron Diaz as a former back-up singer for C + C Music Factory?? In other words, the new version has been engineered to appeal to pop-loving tweens and their irony and nostalgia-loving parents.

Much of the movie relies on the power of Annie’s charisma. Everyone likes her, everyone does essentially everything she ever asks. As an audience, we’re supposed to be so enchanted with her that we buy that. The new Annie, Quvenzhané Wallis, is not as charming as the movie thinks she is. She’s charismatic to be sure, but not at the level the movie asks her to be. Her persuasiveness is only there because the script says it has to be. Fortunately, her appeal accrues eventually, so by the end of the film, it’s not a total mystery why anyone would be charmed by her. But an entire movie balanced on the specialness of one kid shouldn't make us wait until its final third to actually see that specialness, you know?

Besides Wallis' stiffness, the main problem with the movie is that it wants to have it both ways. It wants to be winking and self-aware but also have you buy into the world in which people spontaneously break into song and dance. At one point, while Bobby Canavale is belting out the “Easy Street’ musical number, Cameron Diaz looks around and says, “Are you singing to me? Why is this happening?” But then in the very next beat, she leaps to her feet and begins crooning back.

 

The movie wants to have big Broadway musical numbers, but without putting too much effort into the choreography. In some kind of effort to seem casual and hip, the dance numbers just look improvised and lazy. In the climactic song and dance number "I Don't Need Anything But You" following (spoiler alert) Annie's rescue from her non-parents, Wallis and Jamie Foxx tromp around a riverside park around as though the director is just off screen yelling directions through a megaphone. "Okay, Jamie! Now jump up on that bench! Now twirl! No, wait. Get down off the bench! Oh, hold on. The bench was good! Get back up on the bench!" The movie clearly spent millions on its sets and production, but not much of it was spent on making it a really good musical.

This contradiction is at the heart of what’s wrong with the new Annie. It wants things both ways – to be classical and hip, to be new and old, to be ironic and sincere at the same time. It never fully commits one way or the other and just ends up not having any real impact either way.

As far as revision goes, sometimes I’ll have a student turn in a new draft that isn’t actually new. He will change the font, print it on colored paper, and hand it in bound in a fancy plastic folder, hoping, I assume, that the outer appearance will distract me from the lack of new ideas or quality execution inside. Unfortunately, that’s what’s going on with this version of Annie. Poppy, autotuned songs and a slick 21^st century setting aren’t enough to cover uninspired writing and direction. Don’t spend your holiday money on it. If you’re a fan of musicals or the original Annie or Cameron Diaz or whatever, your best bet is to wait and watch it at home.