(Summary taken from Wikipedia)
Annie is a 1982 American musical film adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name by Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin, and Thomas Meehan, which in turn is based on Little Orphan Annie, the 1924 comic strip by Harold Gray. The film was directed by John Huston, scripted by Carol Sobieski, and stars Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, Geoffrey Holder, Edward Herrmann, and Aileen Quinn in her film debut.[4] Set during the Great Depression, the film tells the story of Annie, an orphan from New York City who is taken in by America's richest billionaire Oliver Warbucks. Filming took place for six weeks at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
The film, released on June 18, 1982, received mixed reviews from critics and was nominated for Best Production Design and Best Song Score and its Adaptation at the 55th Academy Awards.
A television film sequel, named Annie: A Royal Adventure! was released in 1995. In their first film collaboration, Disney and Columbia Pictures produced a made for television version in 1999. Columbia released a contemporary film adaptation on December 19, 2014.
(My review)
I saw this version later in my tween years, having grown up with the 1999 Disney version, which I still think is better than this version, despite the strong cult following that this version has. All around, this movie has not aged very well, and from the opening credits, immediately feels like an eighties movie. Most of the cast is spot-on, my favorites being Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, and Toni Ann Gisondi as Molly. Unfortunately, Aileen Quinn, who plays Annie, is not a very good actress or singer, and is made to wear a ridiculous wig throughout the entire film, which distracts from a lot of the scenes. Also, despite being the longest movie adaptation of the three, this version suffers from not explaining all the major plot points clearly. Annie only mentions how she thinks her parents might be still alive as a passing comment at the beginning, and this is not mentioned again until three quarters into the movie, making it feel very abrupt. In the stage version (as well as the 1999 Disney version), her search for her parents was a very important part of the story, and downplaying it is just unforgivable. For years, I watched this on TV, and the movie was cut down to 102 minutes as apposed to the original 127 minute running time, so I assumed that this downplaying was due to the TV cuts. But now that I have the film on DVD and have seen it uncut, I can definitively say that this movie does downplay the search for her parents. I am also not a fan of how the Christmas setting was removed in favor of a Summertime setting. And I also did not like the added songs (at the expense of cutting some of the most popular songs of the original stage play), with the exception of "Sign." However, the ending is well done, and I think it was done a lot better than the ending of the stage version. I do really like this version, and it's a movie I'm glad to have in my collection.
Annie is a 1982 American musical film adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name by Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin, and Thomas Meehan, which in turn is based on Little Orphan Annie, the 1924 comic strip by Harold Gray. The film was directed by John Huston, scripted by Carol Sobieski, and stars Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, Geoffrey Holder, Edward Herrmann, and Aileen Quinn in her film debut.[4] Set during the Great Depression, the film tells the story of Annie, an orphan from New York City who is taken in by America's richest billionaire Oliver Warbucks. Filming took place for six weeks at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
The film, released on June 18, 1982, received mixed reviews from critics and was nominated for Best Production Design and Best Song Score and its Adaptation at the 55th Academy Awards.
A television film sequel, named Annie: A Royal Adventure! was released in 1995. In their first film collaboration, Disney and Columbia Pictures produced a made for television version in 1999. Columbia released a contemporary film adaptation on December 19, 2014.
(My review)
I saw this version later in my tween years, having grown up with the 1999 Disney version, which I still think is better than this version, despite the strong cult following that this version has. All around, this movie has not aged very well, and from the opening credits, immediately feels like an eighties movie. Most of the cast is spot-on, my favorites being Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, and Toni Ann Gisondi as Molly. Unfortunately, Aileen Quinn, who plays Annie, is not a very good actress or singer, and is made to wear a ridiculous wig throughout the entire film, which distracts from a lot of the scenes. Also, despite being the longest movie adaptation of the three, this version suffers from not explaining all the major plot points clearly. Annie only mentions how she thinks her parents might be still alive as a passing comment at the beginning, and this is not mentioned again until three quarters into the movie, making it feel very abrupt. In the stage version (as well as the 1999 Disney version), her search for her parents was a very important part of the story, and downplaying it is just unforgivable. For years, I watched this on TV, and the movie was cut down to 102 minutes as apposed to the original 127 minute running time, so I assumed that this downplaying was due to the TV cuts. But now that I have the film on DVD and have seen it uncut, I can definitively say that this movie does downplay the search for her parents. I am also not a fan of how the Christmas setting was removed in favor of a Summertime setting. And I also did not like the added songs (at the expense of cutting some of the most popular songs of the original stage play), with the exception of "Sign." However, the ending is well done, and I think it was done a lot better than the ending of the stage version. I do really like this version, and it's a movie I'm glad to have in my collection.