Very Annie Mary

Annie Mary (Rachel Griffiths) is a simple-minded, clumsy, and kind-hearted twenty-something still living at home with her domineering, hypocritical, Pavarotti loving father in a small country town. Denied the chance to study singing in Milan at age sixteen due to the death of her mother, Annie has given up singing altogether and is barely hanging onto dregs of a dull romance with Colin, a man whom she has to bribe for sex. Just when it seems she may have a chance to have a life of her own, Annie Mary’s father has a stroke, and she is forced to take the reigns of his bakery and care for him at home. When Annie Mary realises that her best friend is dying, she desperately tries to raise money for a trip to Disneyland by forming a pop group and entering a talent contest, with one thousand pounds in prize money. A comedy of sorts, “Very Annie Mary” features several song and dance routines in the mode of “The Full Monty” and like that film, the depressed economy is the backdrop against which the townspeople hope to illicit a modicum of happiness from their penny pinching lives. Director Sara Sugarman is also responsible for the script.