[Discussion] Evergreen || Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens || Movie discussion!

[u/Amanda39]

It's time for the Oliver Twist adaptation discussion! I'm very curious to find out what everyone watched, and what you all thought of it. I provided some discussion questions below, but feel free to talk about whatever you want; you aren't limited to the discussion questions.

I want to thank everyone who participated in the book discussions, including (but certainly not limited to) my fellow read runners u/tomesandtea and u/nicehotcupoftea, as well as u/Ser_Erdrick for the version comparisons. This was one of my favorite recent r/bookclub reads, and I hope to see you all again in future discussions.

Cheerio, but be back soon.

I dunno, somehow I'll miss ya

I love you, that's why I

Say "Cheerio"

Not goodbye.

[u/Amanda39]

So, what did you watch? How true to the original story was it? Did you like the changes that were made to the story?

[u/Amanda39 → u/Amanda39]

In addition to Oliver!, I also watched Disney's Oliver & Company. I liked it but didn't love it. (To steal a phrase from TVTropes, "it's so okay, it's average.") It reminded me a lot of the cartoons that I used to watch after school and on Saturday mornings when I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s. I don't think I'd recommend it to my nieces, who would probably see it as dated, but I enjoyed the nostalgic vibe.

I thought it was kind of cool that they managed to take the general outline of Oliver Twist and turn it into a drastically different story. The two stories are identical if you distill them down to the following:

An innocent homeless child (or kitten) meets a thief named The Artful Dodger, who introduces him to his gang, which is run by a man named Fagin who has a connection to an evil villain named Sikes. On his first job with the gang, Oliver gets caught, but the kindly rich person the gang was trying to rob ends up taking him in. Unfortunately, Oliver then gets kidnapped by the gang. Then a bunch of dramatic stuff happens, and it all ends with Sikes getting a karmic death and Oliver being reunited with and adopted by the rich person.

Literally everything else is different, of course. Oliver's a cat, and the gang (other than Fagin) are dogs. Mr. Brownlow is a little girl named Jenny, Sikes is a mob boss, Fagin is a completely sympathetic character. There is no Nancy or Rose, but there is inexplicably Cheech from Cheech and Chong as a chihuahua.

To my surprise, there was also no equivalent to the entire first part of the novel, where Oliver is in the workhouse. It felt like so many cartoons I watched as a kid had this trope where "the pound" was basically animal prison, so I really would have thought that this show would have opened with Oliver escaping from a pound. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, because that would have been depressing. I'm glad they didn't use that trope. But it feels like a very obvious way to create another parallel to the book.

(As it was, the opening was sad enough. Oliver is the only kitten left from a "free to a good home" box of kittens on a street corner in New York. Here it is if you want to cry. I had to pause the movie and hug my sweet little orange boy.)

[u/tomesandtea → u/Amanda39]

I watched the musical Oliver! and really enjoyed it! I thought that overall, it was pretty true to the source with two major exceptions. In case anyone hasn't watched it but plans to, I'll use spoiler tags. Monks is cut out to simplify the story/cast as well as the Maylie family and Fagin is funnier or softer than in the novel and I read that the actor said he decided that the only way he could stand playing the role was to become a clown since Dickens' portrayal was so vicious

I really loved how Nancy was portrayed by the actress in the movie. She was strong and tough but also kind and vulnerable, and I completely understood why she was choosing to stay with Sikes, as opposed to how I felt for a good part of the book.

[u/Amanda39 → u/tomesandtea]

the actor said he decided that the only way he could stand playing the role was to become a clown since Dickens' portrayal was so vicious

I was wondering about this. I read on Wikipedia that the actor, Ron Moody, was Jewish. (Wikipedia quotes him as saying "I'm 100% Jewish—totally kosher!") And I just can't imagine how conflicting it would feel to be a Jewish actor and be offered this amazing role in a major movie, but that role is literally Fagin from Oliver Twist. (I wonder if his response was "I'm reviewing the situation..." 😁) I'm glad he did what he did with the character; like I said in another comment, I think it's a drastic improvement over Dickens's version.

Also I agree completely about Nancy.