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Review

The latest in a long line of feel-good British comedies, Very Annie Mary incestuously combines the small town mentality of Waking Ned Devine, song-and-dance routine of Full Monty, and the payoff of Little Voice to give a mutated and mediocre film. The equivalent of a modern day village idiot, Annie Mary (Rachel Griffiths) plays a thirty-three year old klutz whose hopes of becoming a great opera singer have been squelched by Jack (Jonathan Pryce), her overbearing father. An amateur opera singer himself known as the "Voice of the Valley", Jack makes his living baking bread and delivering it in an antiquated ice cream truck dressed in a rubber Pavarotti suit while singing Puccini over the loud speaker. Admittedly, Jack's bread business is probably the most interesting and original idea in the film. The rest bores us with the formulaic struggle of Annie finding her own voice and breaking free from her father’s wrath. Rachel Griffiths does a good job playing Annie Mary, but her character is so dejected that pity fills your heart more than laughter. The film remains misguided and leaves us unsure where to focus our feelings. Should we find humor or pity in Annie's backwardness and desperation? Is the movie about her relationship with her dying friend or about her relationship with her father? Of course, in the end, Annie finds her singing voice, in true British comedic fashion and, I suppose, has become the "Singing (and Finally Blossoming) Lilly of the Valley."