Treacly adaptation of the Dickens novel. Those with sugar intolerance, stay away! the surgeon general says this will send you right over the edge. On second thought, drowning in a vat of treacle might be preferable to seeing this movie again...

I think that this is one of those movies that has so insinuated itself into the American pop-cultural consciousness that everyone thinks they love it when in fact nobody can actually stand it. All you hear about is what a great movie it is and people sing bits of the songs and talk about the kid who played Oliver...but none of these people (Mr. Otter included) actually is able to remember what it's really like. Like childbirth, you forget the pain and rewire your memories to include only the happy parts. Otherwise, we as a nation would rise up, burn every print of this sucker, and live richer, happier lives.

You can probably tell how I felt about this...I saw it a couple of times as a kid, and remembered it being very cute (although one of those times was New Year's Day when my mom, my dad and I all had stomach flu, and spent most of the movie running out of the room in rotation...). Mr. Otter and I bought this when it came out, and I remember we started to watch it, he fell asleep and I turned it off...and we never finished watching it.

Four years later, two nights ago, we did indeed watch it. I figured I had better write this review fast, before the horror of it had faded from my memory and I started saying things like, That was a cute movie, let's watch it again...

BELIEVE ME ON THIS ONE: YOU DON'T WANT TO DO IT.

Oh my God. I was so appalled at this movie when I really really watched it. Even beer didn't help. In fact, a WHOLE LOT of beer might have helped considerably, but I don't think there was time for that much during a 2 1/2 hour movie...any shreds of consciousness would have been too many.

The songs range from catchy things that almost everyone can remember bits of but nobody can sing all of, to horrible treacly nasty things like Where is Love? and As Long As He Needs Me. Oh man. It makes me shudder just to think of them. I want to burn out those parts of my brain.

And the dance numbers. The ponderous choreography. When you look at a movie like My Fair Lady that has excellently staged dance sequences, you can really see how revolting Oliver! (yes, the exclamation point is actually part of the title. Feh.) is. Great lumbering masses of people dancing in huge production numbers that don't do anything but make you faintly queasy.

And what can one say of the young Mr. Lester? hm. Yes, he's cute in a completely clueless sort of way, and of course with no acting ability his cuteness is not impaired by any hint of facial expression, which I guess is a good thing. His singing sounds dubbed, but I doubt it is, since they'd never use someone who can barely carry a tune as a voiceover...Mark Lester and his wife are osteopaths now. More power to 'em, I say, you should know what you are (and are not) good at...

The rest of the kids, esp. Jack Wild, aka the Artful Dodger, are just plain scary. I think he was actually a midget rather than a kid...creepy. Wierdly staged dance numbers with far too many children prancing about. The choreographer obviously had no clue what to do with more than about 4 people at a time...consequently, everyone is sort of milling around doing some very odd things indeed in unison.

Pretty much the only bright spot in the whole sorry mess (besides the end credits, which do not come NEARLY soon enough) are Ron Moody and Oliver Reed, both of whom are excellent actors, doing a very creditable job at the roles of Fagin and Bill Sikes, respectively. At least they didn't make Oliver Reed sing, for which (even though he is no longer among us) he should be eternally grateful. But as excellent as these two actors are, they are still not enough reason to actually waste your time on this hideous film.

Railroad David is still regretting that he didn't listen to me when I warned him about AI...don't follow his example! Whatever you do, heed my advice! If there's nothing else, rent an Adam Sandler movie, for God's sake, it's GOTTA be better than this, and if not, at least it'll be shorter.

You have been warned.