Recent Golden Globe winner Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under) logs another strong performance in Very Annie-Mary, a quirky dramedy that should entertain anyone who enjoyed Little Voice, as both films feature timid female characters who hide powerful voices behind shyness and bangs.

Griffiths plays the titular Annie-Mary, the only child of Jack Pugh (Jonathan Pryce, Bride of the Wind), who is known throughout the village of Ogw in South Wales as the Voice of the Valleys.  We first see Jack wearing a Pavarotti mask as he bellows to a Puccini tape while driving his bakery truck through the town.  He's an extremely strict and overbearing dad who treats Annie-Mary like a maid, buys her a cabbage for her birthday and uses her for a human foot warmer.

Why does she take it?  Well, it seems the childlike and extremely clumsy Annie-Mary, who is nearly 30 years old, hasn't aged much mentally since her mother died back when she was 16.  Because of that, she was forced to abandon her singing career (and a prestigious Milan scholarship that followed her winning the Eisteddfod) because she had to take care of her father.

Annie-Mary is allowed to come out of her shell a bit at a time when Jack suffers a debilitating stroke.  Her adventures trying to run the bakery result in laughs, as do her relationships with the local crazies, like the extremely flamboyant shopkeepers (Titus's Matthew Rhys and Black Hawk Down's Ioan Gruffudd) and the vicar who is convinced the future is in scratch-n-sniff bibles.  There are two major plotlines in the film:  One has Annie-Mary breaking out on her own and purchasing her dream house, while the other finds her resuming her singing career in an attempt to raise money to send her terminally ill best friend (Joanna Page) to DisneyWorld.

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