Disney Movie Challenge
Oliver & Company (1988)
One of the inspirations for this blog was an article in /Film that ranked every Disney Animated Film. Since I hadn’t seen very many of them I didn’t have too much of an opinion on their list. As I am getting close to the halfway mark it is becoming clear that I often disagree with them. I was curious to see if Oliver & Company really deserves to be in the bottom three worst films. While I still haven’t seen all the films this is leading contender in my book for worst Disney Animated Film.
The movie is a retelling of Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist but set in 1980’s New York with a cat and dogs as its main cast. Oliver (Joey Lawrence) is an orphaned kitten who runs into a gang of stray dogs including Dodger (Billy Joel). They teach him about life on the street and their petty theft operations. Oliver joins the group but on one of their missions a wealthy girl finds him and adopts him. The stray dogs thinking he is in trouble try to rescue him. Of course things go haywire and Fagan (Dom DeLuise), the human leader, of the ragtag group decides to use Oliver as ransom. He needs to get money he owes the evil loan shark Sykes.
The first thing that stands out is the animation just doesn’t look up to Disney standards. After the big flop of The Black Cauldron, new CEO of Disney Michael Eisner and new head of Disney Studios Jeffrey Katzenberg cut the budgets of the animation department and demanded they release one animated film every year. While The Great Mouse Detective proved that you can make a good movie on a limited budget somehow that didn’t work for Oliver & Company. The movie just looks cheap.
The other big problem is that the songs are pretty bad. I don’t have anything against 80’s songs and for the most part songs in 80’s movies were pretty amazing, but the songs in here just don’t work. It’s weird when you have big name talent like Billy Joel and Bette Middler in your cast and their songs just sound bad. I grew up in New York and know Billy Joel is a big deal there and I do love his songs. On paper he should fit perfectly for the role of a smooth talking streetwise dog, but somehow he just feels wrong.
Finally the story just isn't that engaging. It’s a pretty boring movie that makes it hard to care for any of the characters. Maybe there is something about Oliver Twist musicals I don’t like. When I did my Oscar challenge I hated the 1968 best picture winner Oliver!. But this one just feels different. This is a Disney film and it’s weird that we are supposed to feel sympathy for Fagan who is technically a bad guy.
OVERALL: There really isn’t much going on with this film. It looks bad, it’s boring, and the songs are lackluster. There is a good reason this is a mostly forgotten film.
RANDOM FACTS:
Had 11 minutes of computer enhanced images.
One of the few Disney Animated films that takes place in modern times.
One of the first writing credits for future Oscar nominee James Mangold.
Pictures taken from a dog's point of view were taken in NYC to help get the perspective right. Something similar was done in Lady and the Tramp.
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