Has little bite.
Oliver! (1968)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:25
Fresh:21
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: It has aged somewhat awkwardly, but the performances are inspired, the songs are memorable, and the film is undeniably influential.
Runtime: 2 hrs 33 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Synopsis: Carol Reed (THE THIRD MAN, ODD MAN OUT) softens the edges of his social commentary as he heads into the slums of 19th-century London in this vigorous adaptation of Lionel Bart's musical version of... Carol Reed (THE THIRD MAN, ODD MAN OUT) softens the edges of his social commentary as he heads into the slums of 19th-century London in this vigorous adaptation of Lionel Bart's musical version of the Dickens classic. Mark Lester stars as Oliver, a nine-year-old orphan who's sold to an undertaker by workhouse officials for objecting to his scant rations; he soon manages to escape from bondage and make his way to London. There he's befriended by the precocious Artful Dodger (Jack Wild), a pickpocket who belongs to a gang of youthful thieves run by Fagin (Ron Moody), a veteran cutpurse. This criminal mentor admits Oliver to his academy of larceny, introducing him also to the brutish Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and Sikes's kind-hearted wife, Nancy (Shani Wallis). As time passes, Nancy becomes almost a mother to Oliver, and when the resentful Sikes falsely accuses the boy of stealing from the gang, it's time for the orphan to speak up and find out who his friends are. A romanticized and more lighthearted retelling of Dickens's brooding social melodrama, buoyed by a score studded with standards such as "Who Will Buy?" and "Where Is Love?" and energized by Broadway-style choreography, OLIVER! is a model of what a film musical should be. [More]
Starring: Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Oliver Reed, Harry Secombe
Starring: Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Oliver Reed, Harry Secombe, Mark Lester, Jack Wild, Hugh Griffith, Hugh O'Conor, Peggy Mount, Leonard Rossiter, Hylda Baker, Kenneth Cranham, Megs Jenkins, Sheila White, Wensley Pithey, James Hayter, Elizabeth Knight, Fred Emney, Edwin Finn
Director: Carol Reed
Director: Carol Reed
Producer: John Woolf
Screenwriter: Vernon Harris
Story: Lionel Bart, Charles Dickens
Composer: Lionel Bart
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Reviews for Oliver!
Reed's memorable and epic musical provides good family fun, some great musical numbers and in Fagin, the Artful Dodger, and Sykes, some of cinema's most beloved unsavoury characters.
After a season of watching inane twitching in the name of dance, the viewer is most happily greeted by Onna White's choreography, an exuberant step-by-step exploration of Victorian zeal.
Overrated at the time of release, the Oscar-winning Oliver! is a skillful but unexciting movie musical, one that softens considerably Dicken's famous novel, and not helped much by the mediocre staging of the production numbers.
Oliver! is better than most screen musicals of the 1960s, a period when oversized, poorly rendered songfests virtually killed the genre.
In retrospect, it seems emblematic of the triviality Reed descended to in the last years of his career. The Third Man it's not.
An intense and inspired musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic story about an orphan's amazing ordeal on the streets of the big city.
Reed is craftsman enough to make an efficient family entertainment out of Lionel Bart's musical, but not artist enough to put back any of Dickens' teeth which Bart had so assiduously drawn.
Makes an epic impact, fully exploiting cinema to chase the intensity of a live musical while also allowing time for intimate expression of character.
Memorable, and responsible for inspiring a cottage industry of ragamuffin musicals a la Newsies.
A great family musical, spirited and youthful, with moments of true sadness, tragedy and joy -- full of rosy cheeked dirty-faced angelic-voiced boys with plenty of mischief inside them.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | G.I. Joe: The Rise of … |
| 52% 52% | The Taking of Pelham 1… |
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| 19% 19% | Transformers: Revenge … |
| 55% 55% | Orphan |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 88% 88% | Ballast |
| 66% 66% | The Merry Gentleman |
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