New Annie 2014 Movie Received Mostly Negative Reviews From Major Critics
Columbia Pictures (Sony) released their new comedy/musical “Annie” 2014 remake flick into theaters this weekend, and the top,major movie critics have all submitted their reviews. It turns out that it was very unliked by most of them with an overall 33 score out of a possible 100 over at the Metacritic.com site.
The movie stars: Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, David Zayas, and Quvenzhané Wallis. We’ve added blurbs from a couple of the critics,below.
Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com, gave it a decent 75 score, stating: ” Annie is light on its feet, frothy, and always insistently, at times provocatively kind, determined to melt grumpy hearts like marshmallows.”
Claudia Puig over at USA Today, gave it a 50 grade. She said: “Quvenzhané Wallis is adorably plucky as the lead in Annie. She and Jamie Foxx as the newfangled Daddy Warbucks character have an appealing chemistry and their songs together are the best moments in the movie. But the rest of Annie is banal, shallow and markedly cynical.”
Ty Burr from the Boston Globe, gave it a 50 score, saying: “The unforced cleverness of the opening scenes gives way to lazy plotting, awkwardly staged musical numbers, and car chases. By the end, the movie resembles just another formulaic, family-friendly piece of product, one the kids will enjoy and you’ll endure as it goes in the DVD player for the 40th time.”
Mary Houlihan from the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it a 50 grade, stating: ” Musical theater versions often seem dated, so moving the story into the 21st century does make sense (as does the multicultural casting), but in the process Gluck and his all-star cast create a chaotic film that tries too hard and fails to capture the charm and heart of the musical.”
Inkoo Kang from TheWrap, gave it a 50 score, stating: ” No amount of self-referential jokes can make up for a lack of heart and spirit. Thankfully, Annie lacks neither.”
Elizabeth Weitzman from the New York Daily News, gave it a 40 grade. She said: “For all the talent involved, the overall effect is surprisingly flat. Foxx appears disconnected, Byrne is wasted and a painfully hammy Diaz seems to be in another movie altogether.”
Michael Phillips from the Chicago Tribune, gave it a 38 score, stating: ” The overall vibe of this folly is curdled and utterly blase; it’s a 118-minute foregone conclusion, finesse-free and perilously low on the simple performance pleasures we look for in any musical, of any period.”
Betsy Sharkey at the Los Angeles Times, gave it a 30 grade. She stated: “Director Will Gluck’s glam, grim re-imagining of the Depression-era musical about the hard-hearted rich man and the little girl who melts him, is truly depressing.”
A.O. Scott over at the The New York Times, gave it a bad 30 grade, stating: ” The cast would have been better served by a middle school production overseen by a creatively frustrated, inappropriately ambitious drama teacher than by this hacky, borderline-incompetent production, which was directed by Will Gluck from a screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna.”
Ronnie Scheib from Variety, gave it a 30 score, saying: “The film replaces choreography with metronomic editing, while one-note overstatement drowns out character development.”
Michael Ordona at the San Francisco Chronicle, gave it a 25 score. He said: “Fans of previous incarnations are advised to check their nostalgia at the door, while the uninitiated may simply check their brains.”
Jason Clark from Entertainment Weekly, gave it a 25 score too, saying: “Aside from an unintentional homage to “Zoolander” that is so tone-deaf it’ll make you guffaw, Annie goes out of its way to make viewing it a hard-knock life…for us.”
David Rooney from The Hollywood Reporter, gave it a 20 score, saying: “Putting aside the grating performances, the clumsy direction, the visual ugliness and the haphazard development of story, character and relationships, the movie is hobbled by its intrinsic unsuitability for contemporary retelling.”
Lou Lumenick at the New York Post, gave it a very bad 12 score, stating: ” The worst Hollywood musical so far this century, it’s another misstep for Sony Pictures, which also sponsored the abortive ‘‘The Interview.’’
Joe Morgenstern over at the Wall Street Journal, gave it an even worse 10 score ,saying: “Where to begin in describing the awfulness of Annie? Why not with Sandy, Annie’s dog, whose name now connects with the superstorm in this hapless contemporary update of a musical that begged to be left in its 1930s period. Have you ever seen a dog suffer from incompetent direction? This one does, but no more or less so than the human members of the cast, none of whom have any emotional connection with one another, let alone with a standoffish pooch.”
Finally, Peter Travers from Rolling Stone, gave it a bottom of the barrel 0 score, claiming: “When a stage musical as beloved as Annie hits the big screen and falls ignominiously on its fat one, you might ask: WTF? For starters, updating the Depression-era tale to NYC 2014 is a really dumb idea. The strain of the shoehorning is evident in every scene.” Wow! Stay tuned. Also, get your favorite Movie stuff, and more by Clicking Here.
