Highly Overrated But Still Good

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I think this adaptation is not good. I can take my eyes of it, yes you read it right I CAN. This is what happen when a movie is stuffed with too much tragedy in the story line but dealt with less emotion. The feel does not vibe out of the characters that their performance is basically delivered but not effective and believable. The actors did not have the natural character they need to have in order to play that part. Dodgers was obviously trying hard to be artful that I try to convince myself he is the Artful Dodger, in other words he was not convincing. Oliver possessed the innocent look but not enough begging in his face. When you look at his expression, you cannot 'experience' the tragic. I guess that is what's lacking in this version of Oliver. We were suppose to feel for him even when he is not talking, actually, ESPECIALLY when he is not talking. Bill Sikes is... yikes. He looks fragile in this version that I asked myself is this really an adaptation of Oliver Twist or overly twisted story that the characters start swapping their personality?

I love Charles Dickens and I really wanted to like this movie. After all, there are plenty of things to like. Ben Kingsley is awesome as Fagin, Bill Sykes is threatening without overplaying it, Harry Eden is a great Artful Dodger and the story has its touching moments.But in order for Oliver Twist to be great, you need a great Oliver Twist. I'm sure Barney Clark is a very nice young man. He's definitely trying to make the best out of it, and he definitely has potential as an actor. But his portrayal of Oliver doesn't cut it for me. He is just way too depressing. He spends about the first hour of the movie crying, begging and/or fainting. We don't get to know his motivations, his desires or his goals. He's just there to take a boatload of misery, but I just don't care what happens to him. Character development comes from within, and this just wasn't the case for Oliver.I like the 1968 musical a lot better, because Mark Lester plays a much more endearing and pro- active Oliver. To me, this version seemed more like "Diary of a wimpy kid" (literally). I know this 2005-version is a lot of people's favorite, but I found it too melodramatic and over-the-top depressing. Too bad, because the potential was there.

How disappointed am I!! I like Roman Polanski's work usually-Just loved The Pianist, but this film is so bereft of emotion and atmosphere it could have been made by just about anyone. The costumes and sets are well done but do not look grubby enough for the period and the descriptions that Dickens gives. So many versions have been done so much better-given that Oliver! (the musical) managed to convey the atmosphere I find it hard to understand how Polanski could not manage it. No-one looks right or acts convincingly apart from Ben Kingsley. An actor would have to go a long way to top Robert Newton or Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes and the Bill Sykes in this is not up to it. It seems so true to the book and yet Monks and his motive is not part of it.It is a difficult story to tell with all the richness and characters that Charles Dickens supplies but RP should have tried- much harder.

Charles Dickens' imagination, wrote George Orwell, "overwhelms everything like a kind of weed", and it's true that his works translate to the screen extremely well for that reason. Whether or not you also agree with Orwell that Dickens' characters "start off as magic lantern slides and they end up by getting mixed up in a third-rate movie" is a matter for personal taste - though only the grouchiest critic would brand Polanski's take on this family favourite anything like a massive let-down. What Dickens is best at, of course, is story - and here, Polanski delivers; there's also a sense he's aiming for the definitive version - more knockabout than David Lean's, darker than Carol Reed's. However, like those cinematic predecessors it's necessarily rendered in shorthand and distilled to the prime components: orphans, beadles, pickpockets, prostitutes and kindly benefactors. It looks great, or at least 'Dickensian', as screenwriter Ronald Harwood says: "not the historical sociological truth - that's boring", and Polanski's London is a hyperreal dystopian theme park where everyone seems to be spilling out of taverns in mid-fistfight. Kingsley's practically unrecognisable as Fagin, while Oliver (Clark) isn't half as soppy as forebear Mark Lester, even sporting a bit of an Estuary twang. Bur Foreman as Bill Sikes is no Oliver Reed - whose own portrayal still has the capacity to turn children's matinees into panicked paddling pools. Also, the mind hiccups at crucial plot points: it's Lionel Bart's glorious songs we most associate with Oliver, and tellingly, this version feels strangely hollower for their exclusion.