An average movie

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.

5/10