WORLD TOUR Day 30 - London, England
BEFORE: I've got a three-day layover in London, and what says London more than Charles Dickens? A bunch of scrappy orphans running around dirty Victorian streets, aren't they adorable? My U.S.-based films tended to be either set in modern times or in the 1930's-1940's, but now that I'm in Europe, there's going to be a lot more time-traveling going on. I'll go wherever, and whenever, the stories take me.
Linking from "The Great Muppet Caper", both John Cleese AND Diana Rigg were in a film called "Parting Shots" with Ben Kingsley, who's the only big-name actor in tonight's cast.
THE PLOT: An adaptation of the classic Dickens tale, where an orphan meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master.
AFTER: I could have watched many different versions of this tale, but I've GOT a copy of the 2005 Roman Polanski version handy. My history with the story, beyond reading the book, is that my mother showed me the 1968 musical "Oliver!", and I watched (and filmed) a community theater version. So the story's not new to me, and I've got to judge mostly on the adaptation. (Plus I watched that film "August Rush" last year, which is essentially the same story...)
There are no musical numbers here, which could be seen as both a positive and a negative. The story flows better without the songs slowing it down, and in a sense is more faithful to the novel, which had no songs either. But the songs in the 1968 version also created pockets of introspection, in some cases humanizing characters like Fagin when we see that he sings a peppy number to his thieving orphans.
I think it takes balls to remake a film, particularly one that won the Best Picture Oscar. Still, that was 44 years ago, so the story probably could use some freshening up. Geez, they only waited a few years to re-boot Batman and Spider-Man, why not Oliver Twist? The real classics should never go out of style, and can stand up to many interpretations.
This one's fairly dark, highlighting the use of Oliver Twist as a bargaining chip - everyone from Fagin to Bill Sikes uses him to further their own endeavors. In a sense, he reminded me of Forrest Gump, bouncing from place to place and job to job, essentially failing upwards. And in a similar way that Gump's adventures showed us America of the 1960's to 1980's, Oliver's adventures give us that portrait of nineteenth-century London - especially the dark places, working for the mortician, the pickpockets, the thieves.
Reading the novel's plot summary on Wikipedia, it appears they condensed the story somewhat here, leaving out some extraneous characters, but also ultimately ignoring the question of Oliver's true identity. Your English teacher would probably have a fit, but when adapting a screenplay from a long novel, some sacrifices no doubt need to be made.
Also starring Barney Clark, Jeremy Swift, Harry Eden, Edward Hardwicke, Jamie Foreman, Leanne Rowe.
RATING: 5 out of 10 snuff boxes
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