SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is without doubt the absolute worst version of Twist I've ever seen, and I've pretty much seen them all. Oh, no question, the cast was great. George C Scott was wonderful as Fagin, Curry was quite nice as Sikes. Cherie Lunghi and Michael Hordern have always been big favorites of mine, going back to their days as Shakespearean actors in the BBC filming of the entire Shakespeare canon. And I was so glad to see the character of Charlie get his due - his part in the plot is so often elided.But the plot! Oh my God, the plot! Was there ever such a condensation? Dozens of characters left out, dozens of crucial plot points obliterated in the interests of squeezing this story into 100 minutes or so. Some of the most important story elements were kept, but were stuck in at the wrong places, leaching them of their poignancy. I even found myself laughing at a couple of places, the stuff was handled so badly. Nancy's death scene, by the way, was given the goofiest interpretation I've ever seen.I liked Sikes' dog. It's usually shown as an English bull, but in this version it was a Benji-style mutt. Yeah. I liked the dog. That was about it.

This, yet another version of Oliver Twist is something rather peripatetic. The plot, something which I'm certain most people know, in this movie is rather confusing. It comes across as the director throwing scenes together without any purpose. The scene where Oliver asks for more, is missing entirely.One minute Oliver watches a boy collapse in the field where they are working, the next Mr. Bumble is proposing to the woman who runs the workhouse, and seconds later Oliver is seen working in the Funeral Parlor. Any sense of continuity for why he is there, has been left on the cutting room floor, if ever filmed. The scenery may, arguably, be more realistic, but the story line itself leaves something lacking.

This seldom-seen television movie from the early eighties does the best of any adaptation(up to that time)of capturing the dispair and wretchedness of life for the poor in 19th century London. George C. Scott's Fagin is oily and vile, and Tim Curry's Sikes is chillingly psychotic. The sets and photography convey a sense of grim poverty and desolation all but absent from most versions. Dickens wrote a Victorian horror story of abuse, starvation, and isolation, and this film does his grim novel justice.

This is quite an accurate adaptation of the novel,and for the most part,quite satisfying.Curry does a good job,although I always thought of Sikes as a more burly chap.West does what he can as Bumble,but is miscast.Bumble's pride,arrogance,monumental conceit and collosal ignorance are to be matched by a hulking obese brute,masquerading as charity,piety,and responsibility.West comes across as a silly,dotty,and senile clod-he's just not grotesque enough.The muscular Scott lacks the physically frail quality for a proper Fagin-and his attempt to save Nancy at the end is totally out of character.Dickens created a villain-true,persecuted,discriminated against,and the victim of religious and racial bias-but a calculating,vicious,treacherous snake all the same.Everything else being considered,this is quite watchable,entertaing,and captures much of the spirit of the novel.