The Contenders:
The Lion in Winter (winner)
The Odd Couple
Oliver!
Rachel, Rachel
Rosemary’s Baby
Showing posts with label Oliver!. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oliver!. Show all posts
Friday, May 15, 2020
Monday, March 25, 2019
Monday, October 8, 2018
Friday, February 24, 2017
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Oliver!
Film: Oliver!
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players
Much like Going My Way, which I watched a couple of months ago, I had seen Oliver! before this viewing. This was another film that played regularly on the local station on Sunday afternoons. It would be unfair to suggest that I remembered much of it, though. It’s seriously been more than three decades since I’d last seen it. I remembered a couple of the songs, but that was it. Oliver! is the last Oscar gasp of Old Hollywood, the final clinging bit of glory before everything changed the next year—it’s also the last family (read: G-rated) film to win Best Picture.
Now that I’ve said that, it is the damnedest film to place in its intent. I mean, this is a film about an orphan who is terribly abused and mistreated his entire life, and yet it’s filled with jaunty musical numbers. I won’t say that Oliver! glamorizes the plight of our poor wretch Oliver Twist (Mark Lester), but it certainly makes light of it. It’s bizarre to watch hungry waifs singing and dancing. It’s worth saying that I’m not a fan of Charles Dickens, who wrote the original story. I think it’s evident that Dickens was paid by the word, and the term “Dickensian coincidence” exists for a reason.
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