![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oliver & Company
Aug. 11th, 2020 10:15 amSomehow or other, I managed to miss Oliver & Company all the years while I was growing up, so I saw it for the very first time this year. How can this be? (Well, honestly, when I was young I tended to assume the Disney movies we had on VHS were the only ones that existed.)
It’s a charming movie. Who could not love young Oliver, abandoned in a cardboard box by the side of the road, or the charming scamp of a Dodger and Dodger’s gang of rough but good-hearted dogs? Even Fagin, who in this adaptation of Oliver Twist becomes a lovable loser, beloved by his canine gang of thieves even as he struggles to protect them and himself from the evil businessman Sykes and his two murderous Doberman Pinschers?
In fact, the movie bears a weirdly close resemblance to the original novel for a Disney adaptation, which is especially odd given that the movie transposes the action from early Victorian London to 1980s New York and also makes most of the main characters cats and dogs. And also seems more aware than Dickens ever was that the Artful Dodger, for all that he’s a criminal, is one of the most compelling characters in the story…
Okay, the adaptation is not actually that close, but it bears a distinct resemblance to the original in a way that, for instance, The Black Cauldron and The Hunchback of Notre Dame really don’t. The book and the movie share the same central concern - the suffering of poor orphans in a heartless world run by the rich - and solve it the same way: our particular poor orphan gets adopted by a rich family, but his good fortune can’t even extend to include his gang. In the book, the Artful Dodger’s facing transportation to Australia; in the movie, the Dodger and his gang ride away triumphant, reprising Dodger’s anthem “Why Should I Worry?” (one of the great Disney songs) as they ride away atop cars and buses on New York’s crowded streets, as proud as figureheads.
It’s a charming movie. Who could not love young Oliver, abandoned in a cardboard box by the side of the road, or the charming scamp of a Dodger and Dodger’s gang of rough but good-hearted dogs? Even Fagin, who in this adaptation of Oliver Twist becomes a lovable loser, beloved by his canine gang of thieves even as he struggles to protect them and himself from the evil businessman Sykes and his two murderous Doberman Pinschers?
In fact, the movie bears a weirdly close resemblance to the original novel for a Disney adaptation, which is especially odd given that the movie transposes the action from early Victorian London to 1980s New York and also makes most of the main characters cats and dogs. And also seems more aware than Dickens ever was that the Artful Dodger, for all that he’s a criminal, is one of the most compelling characters in the story…
Okay, the adaptation is not actually that close, but it bears a distinct resemblance to the original in a way that, for instance, The Black Cauldron and The Hunchback of Notre Dame really don’t. The book and the movie share the same central concern - the suffering of poor orphans in a heartless world run by the rich - and solve it the same way: our particular poor orphan gets adopted by a rich family, but his good fortune can’t even extend to include his gang. In the book, the Artful Dodger’s facing transportation to Australia; in the movie, the Dodger and his gang ride away triumphant, reprising Dodger’s anthem “Why Should I Worry?” (one of the great Disney songs) as they ride away atop cars and buses on New York’s crowded streets, as proud as figureheads.
