Very Annie Mary

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: C+

 

 

Annie-Mary (Rachel Griffiths) has been taking care of her father (Jonathan Pryce) all her life and has probably lived at home far too long, but starts to think of where to take her life next in Sara Sugarman’s Very Annie Mary, yet another “lonely quirky gal” film where she is very proper and very properly oppressed.

 

Father is predictably strict and oppressive, but also quirky in his opera singing (with a Luciano Pavarotti mask in a track of all things) is used to promote his bakery.  When he eventually has a stroke, Annie-Mary thinks he is automatically dead, but the “call Dr. Freud” relationship is made wackier when he turns out to be a survivor who needs more attention than ever.  Like Waking Ned Devine (1998), we are invited to see how funny, happy and amusing these people are.  There are some serious moments in these kinds of films, but you would never see such films made about minorities (as that might be too racist?) or Americans (not funny enough or above being quirky?).  Unless one REALLY cares about the female lead and is VERY invested in her, there is nothing to see here.  Even though Miss Sugarman wrote and directed the film, Very Annie Mary is an often-unacknowledged formula style of filmmaking that is wearing thin “very” quickly.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image shows its PAL master origins, but still looks good and color consistent despite the problems going from PAL to NTSC.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is fair for a dialogue-based film.  It is barely above a Pro Logic equivalent.  The extras include the trailer for this and a few other Koch Lorber films, text cast and filmmaker biography information and a photo gallery.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo