‘Annie,’ now as then, is senseless except for kids

Cast: Quvenzhane Wallis, Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx.

Director: Will Gluck.

Screenplay: Will Gluck, Aline Brosh McKenna.

Running time: 118 minutes.

Rated: PG for some mild language and rude humor.

It’s worth recalling that for adults in 1982, “Annie” was a spectacular disaster. For kids, one of whom was me, it was up there with “The Sound of Music” as a musical classic.

The 2014 version is the same: a flawed movie that kids will inexplicably love.

The best to be said of the remake is that Will Gluck and company have certainly made the story, and most of the songs, their own. But, aside from originality points, it is a charmless and grossly materialistic bore.

“Annie” has always been a strange beast, with its grand New Deal politics juxtaposed with the tale of a rich savior taking in a plucky orphan. Here, Annie (Quvenzhané Wallis) is a foster kid living with a handful of pre-teen girls under the lazy supervision of Hannigan (Cameron Diaz) in her Harlem apartment.

Diaz talk-yells at the girls with such unnatural shrillness that it fails at being cruel, comic, or drunken. This is no Carol Burnett.

But nothing actually seems that bad for Annie. She and her foster friends are all clothed and fed and attending clean, friendly schools. They even seem to mostly like Hannigan except when she makes them clean. A hard-knock life, indeed.

This is not the dire, hopeless situation of a blighted Depression-era orphanage. Still, Annie wants out and to find the parents she believes exist. Fine, fair.

On one of her many solo jaunts, she runs into billionaire Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), an affectless, Bloombergian cellphone titan in the midst of a mayoral campaign. In Annie, his team (Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale) sees an opportunity to make him more relatable to the common voter. All they need is a few press-friendly moments with the cute kid from the wrong side of the tracks.

We all know the story. What starts as a tactic turns real as Stacks realizes he can care for another being. It’s how they get there that’s the problem.

Gluck, who made the delightful, self-aware teen comedy “Easy A,” proves inept at staging musical numbers. There is hardly any choreography — in one number Byrne just sways back and forth as the camera flies overhead grandiosely — and the singing, across the board, is on-key, auto-tuned mediocrity.

Wallis, who displayed preternatural talent and strength in “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” has been directed to play Annie as a self-assured brat.

She and Foxx share a few sweet moments, but their connection mostly comes across as superficial — as does nearly everything in this movie.

This “Annie” was supposed to be for a new generation. In the harsh light of 2014, it’s never looked so dated.