ABSTRACT
In less than four decades, the 1977 Broadway musical Annie has been filmed three times, twice for the cinema and once for television. Still, even the earlier movie has found an appreciative audience on home video and DVD over the last three decades, and it is to be feared that in the coming years a non-discerning audience of little girls and their parents will resign themselves to the latest abominable incarnation of Annie as suitable 'family entertainment', and that it will someday also come to be regarded as a 'classic'. The set-up of how Annie became a foster kid is undermined by the basic premise of the 2014 movie, since most of its plot hinges on modern phone technology: everything that happens is immediately filmed and uploaded onto the Internet. When the 2014 Annie came into cinemas, critical reaction was overwhelmingly negative; it later won a Razzie for 'Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel'.
