Review ‘Annie’ From The Editor

“Annie,” a musical that the decades have rendered into a punchline, is modernized, made more streetwise and brought back to life in a production backed by Jay Z and various members of the Will and Jada Pinkett Smith empire.

The new “Annie” is intimate and hip, sarcastic and flip. It opens by mocking the cliched redheaded cheerfulness of the Depression-era comic strip, and proceeds to give the little orphan – “Not an orphan. I’m a foster kid!” – sass to go along with a heart so big it melts all of New York.

Quvenzhane Wallis, that wonder of a child actress from “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” is no tap-dancing Broadway baby with a voice built to reach the balcony. But director Will Gluck and the producers tailor this production to her talents, and it pays dividends.

Annie has charisma enough to turn a school report on Franklin Roosevelt into a performance piece, with her classmates keeping the beat. She charms her “Hard Knock Life” roommates at the foster home, but not the wannabe who collects checks from the state to take care of them all. Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz, vamping it up) has never gotten over being kicked out of C & C Music Factory in the ’90s. She’s a bitter drunk who shrieks at the five kids she cares for.

Foxx and Wallis have fantastic chemistry and it is believable that his Stacks, a man who can barely handle an adoring public, would fawn and fall for a little girl such as the one Wallis plays. The two sing together, play together (there’s a fantastic scene where they go to a Hollywood movie premiere and after party) and bond as fathers and daughters do.

Wallis is terrific as Annie and she can sing like an angel (especially on the terrific sure-to-be-nominated for an Oscar new song, Opportunity), but her onscreen lip synching needs a bit of work.

The soundtrack is still largely faithful to the original. There are some hip hop beats, particularly onA Hard Knock Life, which is no surprise as Jay-Z once sampled that track. The entire song list gets a bit of an update, but it is not a full-on hip hop redo. It still works though — my goodness, the music still works.

What saves this entire film is Foxx, our Annie review can report. He is electric and it is one of the greatest performances in a musical that we’ve seen in some time. We adore the actor in everything he does, but after witnessing him in Annie, we just want to know, what musical will he tackle next?