Plot
Eleven-year-old orphan Annie (Alicia Morton) was left at a girls' orphanage when she was a baby with half a locket shaped like a heart with a key hole and a note from her parents saying they'll come back for her. The orphanage is run by the tyrannical Miss Hannigan (Kathy Bates) who starves the orphans and makes them suffer. Tired of waiting for her parents, Annie tries to escape to find them, but is caught by Miss Hannigan. She finally succeeds in running away, and makes friends with a dog, who she names Sandy. But a policeman catches her and brings her back. When billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Victor Garber) decides to take in an orphan for Christmas, his secretary, Grace Farrell (Audra McDonald), chooses Annie. She is brought to his wealthy estate and bathes in a grand life.
Although at first uncomfortable with Annie, Warbucks is soon charmed by her. He wants to adopt Annie, but Annie still wants to find her real parents, so she announces on the radio a $50,000 reward for anybody who can prove they're her parents. The orphans accidentally tell Miss Hannigan, and her crooked brother Rooster (Alan Cumming), and his dimwitted girlfriend Lily St. Regis (Kristin Chenoweth) cook up a scheme to get the reward by posing as Ralph and Shirley Mudge (Annie's "so called" parents). Lily is left with the orphans after Miss Hannigan and Rooster leave, but Lily accidentally tells the secret. The orphans make her tell them what is going on, and she realizes that Rooster could leave her hanging as he has done before. She and the orphans come to Warbucks' mansion and they are soon found out when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Dennis Howard) arrives with his Secret Service and evidence that Annie's parents are really David and Margaret Bennett and had in fact died several years earlier which was why they never returned for her. Rooster and Lily are arrested by the Secret Service, Miss Hannigan tries to convince Annie to vouch for her to avoid being arrested but when Annie refuses, she goes insane and is sent to an asylum. Warbucks and Grace become engaged, and Annie lives happily with her new parents.
Read more about this topic: Annie (1999 Film)
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