Annie (1982)
 "Tomorrow,
tomorrow, I love you tomorrow, it's only a day away!"
Famed
cartoon strip character, star of radio and Broadway, Little Orphan
Annie came to the big screen with an adaptation of the musical Annie.
The eternally sunshiney and incurably mischievous girl had been
in movies as early as 1918, and her 1930's - 40's radio show was
the biggest thing to hit kidsville in ages, but the moppet had
been off the pop culture radar for a while before this lavish
feature.
Curly redhead Annie lives in a Depression-era orphanage run by
the cruel Miss Hannigan. Annie escapes, is returned, and thanks to
a local promotion, gets to be temporarily adopted by billionaire
Daddy Warbucks.
The young girl warms his heart, but Miss Hannigan recruits two
partners-in-crime who pretend to be Annie's real parents. It's up
to Warbucks, his mystical valet Punjab, dog pal Sandy and the
plucky young heroine to foil Hannigan's plot and make the world
safe for orphans everywhere.
In true Broadway tradition, the action, the drama and the
comedy are interwoven with frequent song and dance routines,
including the orphanage ditty Hard-Knock Life and the a cappella
theme, Tomorrow.
Costing over $40 million, this lavish screen version of the
Broadway blockbuster had nothing going for it, and as a result, it
went nowhere.
An inflated, over-produced behemoth of a show, it substituted
production values for entertainment. Furthermore, it employed a
director (John Huston) whose work on the film indicated that he
had never directed a musical before, and also that he had no
feeling for the genre whatsoever.
A catalogue of squandered opportunities, it wasted the
considerable talents of the unmusical Albert Finney (miscast as
Daddy Warbucks), Carol Burnett (as Miss Hannigan), Bernadette
Peters (as Lily), Tim Curry (as Rooster), and especially Ann
Reinking as Grace.
Newcomer Aileen Quinn played the coveted central role with a
commendable lack of precocity, and it was hardly her fault that
the production surrounding her just sat there like a piece of very
expensive upholstered furniture.
The producer of this wasted opportunity was Ray Stark, and
despite box office grosses of $60 million, Annie barely
earned enough to cover its expensive budget.
The studio bet its bottom dollar (figuratively) that the sun
would come out for a 1995 direct-to-video sequel, Annie: A
Royal Adventure!
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