When I’m driving on road trips I like to listen to three things: Oxventure podcasts, stand-up comedy, and soundtracks for musicals. One of those musicals happens to be Annie. Not the original, and not the newest one, but the 1999 version with Victor Garber and Audra McDonald. You know how you start to notice new things in movies that you’ve seen a million times once you get older? Well I noticed a few things, most of them occurring around the ending. A warning if you’ve never seen this version, there will be spoilers.
Now before I get into the plot I have to let you know that I have never seen or heard the original musical. I haven’t even seen those other movies, just this one. And I know musicals have a sort of logic to them that doesn’t make real world sense, I’m not nitpicking that.
The plot of Annie is about how a little redheaded orphan who gets adopted by a billionaire. I was going to go into more detail*, but you get the gist. Annie is quite obviously the luckiest girl on earth, but let us not focus on that part. We have a lot more to talk about.
Miss Hannigan and Rooster’s Disguises
At the climax(?) of the movie Annie’s “real” parents the Mudges show up and soon she’ll be going with them. But these aren’t her real parents! It’s actually Miss Hannigan and her brother Rooster in disguise!
This part always irritated me because Annie couldn’t recognize Miss Hannigan. Sure she probably never saw Rooster before, but she’s known Miss Hannigan for at least a month. Probably a few years. The disguise was just a wig and glasses. Do better Annie. And the necklace aint even match up correctly it was just a lack of awareness all over the place.
After Annie meets her “real” parents Warbucks tells his mansion staff and they give a toast to Annie Mudge. Annie has been wrung through the wringer at this point and runs to her room crying with Miss Grace following behind her. Annie is ducked off by the window crying on some pillows when Miss Grace starts singing(to the tune of “Maybe”), “Silly to cry, nothing to fear, betcha where they live’s as nice as right here.”
Miss Grace Singing “Maybe”
Miss Grace started off that song with a lie. Warbucks is a billionaire during the Great Depression and according to this inflation calculator a billion then is worth 21 billion now. So Warbucks was big rich. And the Mudges were quite obviously broke. During the Great Depression. So where they live is NOT as nice as where Warbucks does. Annie’s not super bright but she’s not stupid.
The next two lines Miss Grace sings are: “Betcha your life is gonna be swell, looking at them, it’s easy to tell.” And this leads me to wonder why Miss Grace thought they were good people. Was it because they were clearly broke folk? Because they were dripless and wore bum clothes? Why Miss Grace?
Miss Hannigan Instantly Institutionalized
After Miss Hannigan and her brother and his current woman get exposed, something weird happens. Rooster and Lily St. Regis are arrested, but Miss Hannigan gets strapped to a dolly and wheeled out. She’s headed to the “nuthouse, with all the nuts and the squirrels”. Why wasn’t she just arrested? Did she have a history of some sort where they knew that after this stunt the next logical step was a padded room?
Annie’s Therapy
Speaking of mental health, Annie was going to need a lot help with hers. And it’s not just because she was an orphan. Allow me to lay out a timeline of the wild life swings she got. First she was an orphan, then she got chose by Warbucks(this sounded bad when I typed it out), Warbucks wanted to adopt her, but she wanted to at least try to find her real parents.
After they went unfound, she told Warbucks the adoption was cool. Enter the broke Mudges. I added that adjective because by now the billionaire aura had started to settle in Annie’s spirit. Now Annie won’t be adopted, because her “real” parents are here. Fast-forward to the end and we find out the Mudges are frauds.
After Miss Hannigan heads to the soft house FDR(he was invited for Christmas dinner) tells Annie that they found her real parents, but they are big dead and that’s why they never came back to get her. But Warbucks is still going to adopt her!
Now I will admit that most of my psychiatric training is from Elizabeth Olivet and Emil Skoda from Law & Order, but even with my limited knowledge Annie seems like a prime candidate for therapy. But Warbucks is a billionaire so Annie will have to fake being normal cause they sent folk off to asylums real quick back then.
And that’s that. Some of the things I mentioned here bothered me when I was younger, and some I didn’t think about until I got older. Am I reading into things too much? Almost certainly. Is it fun to do that sometimes? Definitely. I haven’t watched this movie straight through in many year but I might actually sit down and make time to do so. Because who doesn’t want to get adopted by a billionaire?
Warbucks’ Proposal to Miss Grace
Wait! I just played the final song that plays when we see Warbucks propose to Miss Grace. Did she even like him like that? Did she even want him? Who knows, but you don’t say no to a marriage proposal from a billionaire. That’s a whole come up. She was about to have her whole family living on one of his many estates, because I can tell she was a real one.
*I had written out almost a complete summary of the plot before it dawned on me that it was too much and unnecessary.
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