Annie (1982)

  This is the version of Annie that I grew up with.  It's been remade several times since then but this is adaptation that sticks with me.

Annie (Aileen Quinn) is an orphan chosen at random to go live for a week with war profiteer and billionaire, Oliver Warbucks (Albert Finney).  Warbucks comes to care for the plucky youngster, but an unscrupulous con man (Tim Curry) hatches a plot with the orphanage owner, Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett) to pose as Annie's parents and claim her for the reward money.

Ah, my favorite sub-genre of fiction:  billionaire suddenly stops viewing relationships as transactional, puts others above himself.  Always a classic.

More than other adaptations, this one feels like a cartoon from the 1920s, complete with ridiculous racist caricatures.  The music is the best part of it, with performances from Burnett, Curry, Ann Reinking, and Bernadette Peters.  It's campy, syrupy, and shallow in its declarations of hope but sometimes that's all you want.