Annie (2014)

  This was supposed to be a review of Corpus Christi, a Polish drama, but I made it 30 minutes and was bored so I turned it off.  Then it was supposed to be a review of Ali but that's no longer on streaming (for free anyway) so that was also out.  Annie popped up while I was looking for Ali.  I didn't even know it was available because, as it turns out, it's extremely difficult to constantly manage the inventory of seven different streaming services.

Annie Bennett (Quvenzhané Wallis) is a foster kid in New York City waiting for her parents to come back.  She runs into billionaire mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) by accident while chasing after some boys trying to hurt a stray dog.  Stacks' campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale) realizes that Annie is a public relations goldmine and pushes Stacks to become her temporary guardian.

This is a modern update of a very old story and I was a little surprised they kept all the musical numbers from the 1982 film in addition to some new songs.  It didn't update as much as I thought it would though it is by nature a very simplistic story.  There were things I liked and things I didn't.

Pro:  Cannavale is very good as the smarmy point-obsessed campaign manager.  Having him do "Easy Street" was also a great idea.  

Con:  Cameron Diaz is a terrible Miss Hannigan.  She can't sing this part.  She is a great dancer and very funny but "Little Girls" was a trainwreck.  It's even more egregious because Tracie Thoms is Broadway trained, extremely versatile, and would have blown the doors off that role.  And she was relegated to less than five minutes of screen time as the Fake Mom.

Pro:  The original songs were good, especially the solo for Wallis, "Opportunity".

Con:  There are a number of loose plot holes especially at the end of the movie.  You really can't think about it too hard or the whole thing falls apart.  It brings up the concept of cell phones tracking our every move several times and then shows zero negative consequences.  I get that having Stacks face censure for monitoring the users of his cell phone network to track down a little girl is kind of a downer but don't bring it up if you're not going to see it through.  

Anyway, Annie is currently streaming on Tubi.