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Director:
Roman Polanski
Cast:
Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman, Frank Finlay, Harry
Eden |
MPAA Rating:
PG-13 for disturbing images |
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Review:
 Do
we need another version of “Oliver Twist?” This is a question that
needs some answering, as according to the good old IMDB, there are
at least 27 versions of the Charles Dickens novel, and while that
isn't nearly as many as say, “A Christmas Carol” or “Dracula” it's
still a bit too much.
Not to say that there's anything particularly WRONG with this
version. Far from it. Ronald Harwood's script is actually a rather
good adaptation, and its directed by Roman Polanski, for crissakes,
Still, this has been done to death and there's nothing remarkably
different about it.
Oliver Twist(Barney Clark), the angelic little orphan with all
that bad luck, loses the draw and goes to ask for more gruel at
the workhouse, and is sold off by that evil beadle Mr.
Bumble(Jeremy Swift) to an undertaker(Michael Heath) and his
shrewish wife(Gillian Hanna), then runs off to London, where
starving and exhausted, is taken under the wing of the Artful
Dodger(Harry Eden) and is then employed by that beloved villain,
Fagan(Ben Kingsley), who was the stereotypical Jew all the way
past the Second World War.
Of course he gets rescued by the kindly Mr. Brownlow(Edward
Hardwicke), then gets counter-rescued by Nancy(Leanne Rowe) and
the despicable Bill Sykes(Jamie Foreman) and then there's the
robbery, murder and all that 19th century sociology that Dickens
was famous for. He was paid by the WORD y'know, and the original
novel was serialized, sort of like a TV miniseries except that…no,
for it's time, the 1840s, it WAS a TV miniseries, and clocking in
at two hours and ten minutes, one's arse begins to get antsy about
three quarters the way through.
Is it worth taking your kids on a Saturday afternoon? Maybe.
Renting the video sometime in the spring so the little darlings
can cheat on their book report? Actually, that might work as it's
unusually faithful to the original source.
Eric Lurio
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