Oliver & Company is animated version of Oliver! with animals, starring Joey Lawrence, Billy Joel, Bette Midler, Dom DeLuise, Robert Loggia, Cheech Marin, Richard Mulligan, Roscoe Lee Browne, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Natalie Gregory.
Oliver (Laurence) is a tiny kitten abandoned on the mean streets of New York. He hooks up with a streetwise dog named Dodger (Joel), and then falls in with a gang of dogs led by a pathetic human thief called Fagin (DeLuise). Fagin owes money to a loan shark named Sykes (Loggia), and plans to get it by...having his dogs pick pockets? It's not remotely clear.
But then Oliver gets adopted by a little girl (Gregory), Sykes winds up kidnapping her, a mad chase over the train tracks ensures, Sykes meets fiery doom, Oliver goes back to Jenny and Fagin and his dogs had back to their ill-defined criminal enterprise.
So like, it's a cute movie, and if you know Oliver Twist or the associated musical, it feels familiar enough that you don't question the stuff they leave out. But since I overthink things, there's a lot that doesn't make sense. Fagin's gang is fun and friendly, but with the exception of Tito (Marin) as the hyperactive chihuahua, none of them really have much personality. DeLuise is appropriately frantic and maudlin as Fagin, and if you need someone to voice a scary mobster, you could do a lot worse than Robert Loggia, but since their relationship is only sketched in, it never really feels real.
Likewise, for a movie about a tiny kitten finding a home, it get jarringly dark at times - not only does Sykes meet his demise by running his car into a fucking train, but his two Dobermans fall off said car and get electrocuted.
All in all, the idea of Oliver! with dogs is a good one, but this is very much a pre-Little Mermaid Disney flick.
My Grade: C-
Rewatch value: Low
Next up: The Omen
No comments:
Post a Comment