If you ever wanted to see Betty White scam kids out of cash, go skinny-dipping, get arrested (and then break out of jail), gamble, and exclaim “Oh, poop!” at the sight of a law enforcement enforcer, today’s your lucky day! You can find it all in Annie’s Point, a 2005 Hallmark original movie about a widow’s determination to fulfill her husband’s dying wish.
White’s Annie Eason has struggled to acclimate to life without Eliot, her husband and best friend. An avid painter, she works beside his urn and converses with him. Compounding Annie’s loneliness is the absence of her granddaughter, Ella (Amy Davidson), who’s away at college. Her son Richard (Richard Thomas), an obligatory Hallmark widower, is local but busy. “I know this is a very difficult time for you, but I can’t be with you 24 hours a day,” he frustratedly tells her.
After Annie successfully manufactures another crisis to lure Richard away from work, they quarrel. He inherited his father’s business and struggles to balance those responsibilities with his mother’s demands on his time. Worried about her absentmindedness and inability to maintain the yard, he proposes she downsize to a condo. Annie adamantly refuses.”I’m fine and I’m not going anywhere. Now if you have a problem with that you should take it up with your father,” she says, thrusting the urn at him.
While her father and grandmother mourn their respective spouses, Ella struggles with her own painful loss. She’s adrift without her mother, who supported her musical ambitions, and clashes with Richard about her future. Strumming a guitar beside her mother’s grave, she asks “So what do you think, Mom? Nursing school or a songwriting career? Everyone else seems to have an opinion.”
Fortunately for this fractured family, Annie has some wacky hijinks up her sleeve that will bring them back together. Sure, it will involve breaking the law, shedding some tears, and even concealing a life-threatening medical condition. But with nine days to spare before their golden wedding anniversary, and with bypass surgery on the horizon, she’s running out of time to fulfill Eliot’s dying wish. He wanted his ashes scattered at their honeymoon destination on their anniversary.
Sound a bit mawkish? You bet your sweet ass it is, and just wait until the denouement! However, as in life, Annie’s Point is more about the journey than the destination. Annie knows this and it’s why she schemes to undertake a 2,000 mile roadtrip with an unsuspecting Ella. After getting her granddaughter into a vintage convertible under false pretenses, she reveals her plan. “I’m going to California and I need you to go with me. What are you gonna do? Stay here, pay rent, mope around? You want to be a songwriter. You have to have something to write about.”
Their subsequent adventures are Hallmark “zany”: Annie poses as a blind caricature artist to hustle cash from kids and their parents! Ella overcomes her social anxiety to flirt with a barista and perform at an open mic night! Richard abandons work to give chase after learning of Annie’s blocked arteries! When she isn’t dipping into her dwindling supply of heart pills, Annie teaches her granddaughter valuable life lessons and pushes her to experience new adventures.
“We’re a regular Thelma and Louise!” she exclaims after they break out of jail following an arrest for trespassing. Along the way, Ella finds an opportunity to meddle in her grandma’s past and reunite her with an estranged sibling. The detour also gives her the opportunity to confide in a relative, about her trip with Annie, “She taught me more in a few days than I ever would’ve learned in school.”
Despite the best efforts of the cast and veteran director Michael Switzer (With a Vengeance, The Woman Who Sinned), the story is as soggy as grandmother and granddaughter post skinny-dip. Annie’s most selfish behavior is unconvincingly framed as impish and vaguely inspirational and her cutesy exploits lack cohesion. With anyone but White in the starring role, Annie’s Point would be all but forgotten, but she elevates the material and makes it worth a second look.
There is something positive to be said about this misfire from a Golden Girls perspective. While it doesn’t go down quite as smoothly as Bea Arthur’s My First Love or Rue McClanahan’s Mother of the Bride, Annie’s Point is top-shelf Hallmark compared to Back to You and Me, the Lisa Hartman Black vehicle in which McClanahan appeared. (I’ll come back to rank White’s The Lost Valentine once I’ve seen it.)
Streaming and DVD availability
Annie’s Point is currently out-of-print on DVD but can be purchased secondhand. You can stream it through UP Faith & Family, which is accessible on its own or via Amazon.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
… But wait, there’s more!
Let’s prep for this interlude by playing the Unsolved Mysteries theme. There was something in the UP Faith & Family stream of Annie’s Point that I can’t quite figure out. When Richard tries to sabotage her road trip by cutting off her credit cards, Annie calls and tells him, of Ella, “She’s out getting a gigantic tattoo of a dragon on her back.”
“Ella wouldn’t do that,” Richard replies. According to the captions, what Annie says next is: “Yes, she would. And I’m getting a skull and crossbones on my butt.” But on the UP stream, all you actually hear is “Yes, she would. And I’m getting a skull and crossbones.” Scandalous! Indeed, there’s a suspicious cut where the dialogue should have continued, but I’m unsure whether it was made by UP or a carryover from a previous edit.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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