In the run up to Christmas there is nothiung better than sitting down and watching a movie!!

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While there are a few conceivable great motivations to redo the Depression-set musical “Annie” in 2014, none of them appear to have educated Will Gluck’s exaggerated yet undernourished treatment. To a greater degree a facelift than an overhaul, the pic tidies off some old melodies, includes a couple of erratic wounds at new ones, and stuffs the casing with sparkly upscale devices that shout “present day.” Featuring a multiracial rock n’ roller cast with few claims to moving aptitude, the film replaces choreography with metronomic altering, while one-note exaggeration muffles character advancement. Indeed without the Sony hacking outrage that made it release online early, “Annie” would appear headed for a dull Christmas bow.

The film starts promisingly with a precredits arrangement wherein Gluck recognizes the undeniable parallel between the Great Depression and the right now augmenting rich/poor gap: A schoolroom show-and-tell produces a standard-issue, red-haired “Annie A,” just to supplant her with an afro’d “Annie B” (Quvenzhane Wallis, the Academy Award-selected waif from “Mammoths of the Southern Wild”). Wallis’ Annie returns to direct the class in an intelligent chronicled execution piece observing FDR’s New Deal, no less. Anyway this clue of cutting edge difficult times, it just so happens, is evoked just to be dealt with as an interesting arrogance.

In Gluck’s 21st-century form, Annie lives with different young ladies not in a shelter however in a Harlem encourage homer by severe, alcoholic Colleen Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), mourning her fizzled profession as a reinforcement vocalist. Neediness, in this squeaky-clean Gotham, depends altogether on sterile set enhancement; a rodent under a straightforward plastic vessel looks more like a relic than a genuine occupant of Miss Hannigan’s flat.

Hustling through the avenues for her puppy, Sandy (here named after the sea tempest, in a completely superfluous sample of contemporization), Annie pitches into the film’s rebirth of Daddy Warbucks, otherwise known as Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), a cell uber-rich person running for chairman, who absentmindedly spares her from an approaching auto. At the point when a feature of the salvage turns into a web sensation, Stacks’ crafty battle administrator (Bobby Cannavale) organizes a photograph session with the lovable moppet, which Annie savvily parlays into food and lodging in return for future photograph ops.

WHEN Cameron Diaz was first approached about playing the drunken, mean-spirited Miss Hannigan in the newly minted version of Annie, she says she was “fairly worried” that she’d have to sing on screen again.

Stacks reluctantly introduces her in his palatial penthouse, where Annie; Stacks’ British counsel, Grace (Rose Byrne); and a Russian-accentuated social-administrations functionary (an incredible Stephanie Kurtzuba) delightedly move and squeal over each one occurrence of runaway plushness. Whatever is left of the plot generally takes after the first, with Annie applying her licensed good faith as a powerful influence for the fixations and astringency of those around her, apportioning epiphanies and giving salvation with the glimmer of a grin.

Wallis passes on the vitality and perkiness of her character convincingly and charmingly, however needs even an indication of the distress that lies behind the belted-out limitless deferral of “Tomorrow.” Indeed, the whole film fails to offer any feeling of neediness past the basic unlucky deficiency of extravagance. Not at all like the New York of Sidney Lumet’s correspondingly area transplanted “The Wiz,” Gluck’s Gotham should be Toronto, with Stacks’ private helicopter swooping among the glossy glass high rises so far an alternate reward of the high life.

The acting when all is said in done inclines around the one-note and unbelievable. Foxx, the film’s just entertainer with broad singing knowledge onscreen, cleverly selects modest representation of the truth, yet Diaz’s whorish lush rages on unchecked, her tumbling down-tanked numbers as unchoreographed as her would-be comic bits are inadequately steered. Byrne’s line readings skirt on the surreal as she endeavors to express Grace’s profession gal forlornness by overprotesting her happiness, and Cannavale’s messy traps politico makes for an overweight miscreant. Just David Zayas’ turn as Miss Hannigan’s everlastingly overlooked yet disobediently common laborers suitor brings an acceptable if oversimplified feeling of class division to the film.

Exceptionally youthful children may be occupied by “Annie’s” one end to the other music and steady development; characters once in a while stop to take a breath. Uncommon thought was clearly exhausted on the presentation of the show’s Charles Strouse/Martin Charnin measures. “It’s the Hard-Knock Life,” moved by Wallis and the other tyke performing artists with once in a while percussive, item pummeling backup enigmatically reminiscent of “Step” (effectively feeling more dated than Busby Berkeley), is winningly executed by this extraordinarily capable kid troupe. By a wide margin the film’s best joining of New York areas happens in the organizing of “Tomorrow”: Like Snow White chattering into her wishing great, Wallis begins off singing into a walkway downpour puddle, while Gluck keeps on getting her appearance against plate-glass structures and the windows of passing transports all through the number.