very good B+

I saw this one tonight, and it was outstanding. A fantastically lucid portrayal of 1800's London as the backdrop for Dicken's classic tale. Remake? Well, yeah, but there've only been a handful of film adaptations - the most recent non-TV one a musical almost 40 years ago and the classic David Lean version more than half a century back. And how is it that a story written/published in 1837-9 still warrants a re-telling today? Well, though it is surely not Dickens finest work, it is a hard one to forget once experienced. It is an ultimate childhood nightmare writ large. Polanski has done an outstanding job of bringing this classic to life - bravo to him for using some of his recent Oscar-cred to interpret a classic - every director should be so bold. Step into the melodrama, live the nightmare, feel the past!

5 out of 5.

Just noticed that the print ads for Oliver Twist unusually include a review from an author. John Irving, who wrote World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meaney, amongst many other fine novels, and who has always professed that Dickens is one of his key inspirations, writes the following about Polanski's adaptation:



This movie is being severely under-rated and unfairly ignored - check it out on the big screen before it disappears...

B-


Oliver Twist is certainly a well-meant movie and technically also a well-made one too, but unlike Polanski's last effort, The Pianist, this movie is hollow in its core. Visually, this Dickens adaptation is very appealing. The art direction, the costumes and the make-up are top notch and were shamefully overlooked at the Oscars (especially the art direction). Ben Kinglsey is certainly the major (and only) acting highlight in the film. He is great as always and delivers a great portrayal of Fagin. I sadly cannot say that much of a boy who plays Oliver himself as he is okay at best.

The storyline just never grabbed me and the ending with Fagin in prison waiting for his death left me feeling rather confused than emotionally touched or anything. Overall, it is a nice and mostly entertaining movie, well-made on a technical level and greatly acted by Kingsley, but very empty on the level of the storyline.