Annie (2014)

For a sappy crappy movie, this latest update of the 1977 Broadway musical has a few good moments, just not enough. No more orphanage--Annie and her friends are now foster kids in the era of Instagram, and Will Stacks (AKA Daddy Warbucks) is a narcissistic cell phone maker. The aerial photography of New York, however, is spectacular.

We thought we'd try this because we like Jamie Foxx (last blogged in Horrible Bosses 2) and Cameron Diaz (before a cameo in In a World... she starred in Bad Teacher), who play Stacks and Miss Hannigan. There's no shortage of talent in this almost universally panned extravaganza. Quvenzhané Wallis (last in 12 years a Slave) takes the title role, Rose Byrne (most recently in This Is Where I Leave You) is Stacks' adoring assistant, Bobby Cannavale (last in Chef) is a conniving associate, and there are cameos by Mike Birbiglia (Sleepwalk with Me) as a social services guy, and Ashton Kutcher (Jobs) and Mila Kunis (Third Person) in the movie-within-the-movie.

Apparently everyone does his or her own singing, and there's an abrupt change in room tone every time  the on-set dialogue cuts to the studio singing (or maybe that's just the auto-tune). A couple of old songs are missing and three new ones are added. The opening credits are creative, with Annie running around the city past street musicians playing clips of the soundtrack in various styles.

Director Will Gluck (I heard Easy A (2011) was good and always meant to see it) co-wrote the script with Aline Brosh McKenna (We Bought a Zoo).

The critics on Rotten Tomatoes are averaging a painful 27% and the audiences only 63, so apparently only non-voting moviegoers are putting this movie sixth at the box office in its third weekend. Bottom line: if you have a little girl who's eager to see this, it's not all bad. If not, perhaps you should save your money and catch it on free cable sometime in the future to see the opening credits and the aerial shots.