Oliver & Company

Day 128 - 5/8/09 - Movie #128

BEFORE: I conclude my tribute to Dom DeLuise with this film based (loosely) on Oliver Twist. I just don't have any more to watch - I've already watched 4 films on my list with Dom prior to this week, including 3 animated films - "The Secret of NIMH", "An American Tail", and "An American Tail: Fievel Goes West". I actually had no idea he did so much voice-over work, but it makes sense. Here he provides the voice for the "Fagin" character.

THE PLOT: A lost kitten joins a gang of dogs engaged in petty larceny in New York.

AFTER: The opening scenes affected me, because they show a stray kitten in the rain - on Sunday I watched a man abandon a cat in the parking lot near my house. By the time I rushed outside to tell him off, he was gone - he had brought the cat in a carrier with an open can of tuna, opened the carrier and headed for the hills. I saw the cat in a nearby stairwell, but after I went back inside to get some cat treats, the cat was gone too. Then it rained for 5 days straight - I can only hope that the cat wanders into our backyard and finds the plastic tubs lined with straw for strays to live in.

My first impulse was to track down (somehow) the heartless bastard who abandoned the cat and drag him out to the middle of a desert (again, somehow...) in a crate with a cheeseburger, to see how long he would last. My anger has cooled a bit since Sunday - life on the streets of Queens might be better than being euthanized in an animal shelter, but there are enough stray cats in our neighborhood already (one now lives in our basement, two more now live with a friend in Texas), and I don't have the time or resources to rescue them all.

Anyway, I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would. Voices were provided by Joey Lawrence, Cheech Marin, Richard Mulligan, the great Roscoe Lee Browne, and Billy Joel (also singing a song about NYC streets as "Dodger" the dog...). Bette Midler and Sheryl Lee Ralph also do acting and singing as female dogs - my only beef is with the character designs, which sort of seem like leftovers from "Lady and the Tramp".

RATING: 7 out of 10 hot dogs