Oliver & Company Reviews

OK, first things first. I am not sure what Charles Dickens would say if he found his best book "Oliver Twist" has inspired an animation. I hate to say this, but surprisingly the project worked quite nicely, if a little predictable and uneven at times. The animation isn't bad at all, actually very clean and smooth mostly, and neither is the story, both of which are the redeeming merits of an enjoyable movie like this one. The characters were also well done in general. My favourite was Georgette, what a genius the casting director was to cast Bette Midler. Jenny and Oliver- who was adorable- were appealing also, but Sikes at times was a bit frightening, and Fagin's part was quite poorly written. Now the script was the letdown, very uneven at times, and unintentionally funny, and this marred the well-told narrative. Some of the characters were uninspiredly written, and Tito was a little hard to understand. On a positive note, I loved the songs, especially "Why Should I worry?" which is delightfully catchy. May I also say that Billy Joel did a great job with Dodger, who was one of the better characters. And it has a wonderful contemporary atmosphere. All in all, an enjoyable and well-told film, that was let down by the script. 8/10. Bethany Cox

So we’ve come to the final film of the Bronze Era, and it is, undoubtedly, the absolute worst of the lot. Despite coming out a year before The Little Mermaid elevated the studio back to heavy-weight prominence and lush animation, Oliver and Company looks like it’s been hanging around the vaults since the early 70s. To call the animation rough and uninspired would be too kind.

 

It’s hard to decide what’s the worst thing about Oliver and Company – the poor songs, cheap ploys for relevance by casting MOR musical acts, lack of character development, or the routine plot mechanics. It’s all so bland, so tastefully inoffensive, it could only be described as the sight of the studio working on autopilot. Very little care or effort went into this one.

 

The appearance of Huey Lewis singing over the opening credits is our first warning. I can’t think of many children of the 80s who were demanding his music, nor for Billy Joel. At least Joel manages to liven up his stiff characterization with New Yawk sass. Even stranger is the decision to not have Sheryl Lee Ralph, a Broadway dynamo, sing her song, instead, they’ve got Ruth Pointer. The discordance between her speaking and singing voice reminds you of those moments in West Side Story or My Fair Lady when Marni Nixon’s immaculate vocals wouldn’t match the body they were supposedly emanating from. It feels like such a cheap ploy to be “hip” with the times, and it just becomes cringe inducing to the modern viewer.

 

There’s very little to do with Charles Dickens here, but this wasn’t the first time that Disney had repurposed a narrative into something entirely different. The problem is that unlike Pinocchio, which also had little to do with Carlo Collodi’s original text, they forgot to transform any of the characters into unique individuals. All of them play as types, with the voice actors doing all of the hard work. Bette Midler comes off best as melodramatic poodle from the upper class, but it’s not dissimilar to any of Midler’s numerous comedic roles from the same decade.

 

Even worse is how the few human characters look like they’re from completely different films than the cutesy animals. There’s no central conflict, and the only one that arises is between Fagin and Sykes, who are ancillary characters, at best. Human girl Penny is all soft and sweetness in comparison to the ugly caricatures of the others, and her lack of pupils is distracting.

 

There’s nothing that really works here, and Oliver and Company is of most importance for the history of which it precedes. Disney executives decided that they would start releasing one film per year, this was the first film in that plan. They also decided to include McDonald’s Happy Meal tie-ins, and I remember while the Renaissance was on-going that each new film was announced by both a trailer and a series of commercials for the fast-food giant. Lastly, Oliver and Company was the first film that was a big Broadway style musical from the studio in a long time, which would become the norm going forward. Shame that this film is lousy, but the insistence on celebrity stunt-casting would point towards a major problem for the studio going forward. It deserves its status as a historical footnote.

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since it was available on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out again. Well, at the end of the 80’s, Disney would make a massive come-back with ‘The Little Mermaid’ which started the era known as the Disney Renaissance. However, before this welcome renaissance, throughout the 80’s, pretty much all their movies were either some critical or commercial failures. This movie would be the last one they released before ‘The Little Mermaid’ and it was indeed pretty weak, I’m afraid, even if it turned out to be actually quite successful at the box-office when it was released. If I recall it correctly, I saw the damned thing in the movie theater when I was a kid and, sure, I thought it was watchable and I didn’t hate it at the time but it was nothing really memorable either. The main issue was that the concept was just so misguided. Indeed, in a similar fashion to what they did with their previous movie, 'The Great Mouse Detective', they used a classic story (‘Oliver Twist’ in this case) and substituted the main characters with some talking animals, mostly cats and dogs. However, it never worked as 'Oliver Twist' is actually a dark and gloomy story and to turn in into some cheerful musical was rather ludicrous. Seriously, if you would believe this movie, living in the street might not be so bad after all. On top of that, concerning the animation, the whole thing was fairly ugly and it was pretty much one of the cheapest looking productions they have ever released. Anyway, to conclude, I’m pretty sure it is one of the weakest animated features produced by this prestigious studio and I don’t think it is really worth a look, except maybe if you have some really young kids to entertain or if you are a die-hard fan of the genre.

When Oliver & Company was re-released in 1996, I wanted to see it. I got the VHS, watched it, and loved every moment of it and watched it practically all the time growing up. This is Disney's most underrated movie ever. Nobody seems to know that it wasn't The Little Mermaid that was Howard Ashman's first Disney movie to compose, but rather, it was Oliver & Company, in particular, the opening song "Once Upon A Time In New York City", sung by Huey Lewis. The characters are pretty cool even though there's not much to some of them, the songs are pretty good, and overall, I would watch this again anytime after I make this review.

My rating: 8/10