Oliver and Company - 7.5/10
Oh my god, this was the most '80s thing I have ever seen. Seriously,
everything about it from the music to the animation style to the
character types to even the way they splashed the film's title all
scream the 1980s. The fact that it takes place in 1980s New York
probably had something to do with it too. Please note that none of this
necessarily makes it bad, per se, just very noticeable. It's
probably the only Disney film that so clearly takes place in a specific
time period. Even the other contemporary films (interestingly enough
also centered around talking animals) had some level of ambiguity in their settings. But enough about that.
I have never seen this movie before. I'm not kidding; even as a kid the
trailers looked too 80s for me and I wasn't interested in it. And this
from a kid who loved Fern Gully. Was I missing out? Maybe a
little, but I have no regrets. There was nothing to really dislike about
this film outside of Cheech Marin being incomparably annoying, and one
or two of the musical numbers were actually pretty good. Yes, it was
Oliver Twist with animals, but they adapted it pretty well and I found
it more interesting than the original Dickens, though to be honest
that's not difficult. The villain was menacing and scary, and Fagin was a
generally nice guy who truly cares for his pets, much like Amos Slade
in The Fox and the Hound, only without the latter's psychotic
temper. A lot of the character arcs like the tough guy with a heart of
gold, and the upper class snooty girl getting soft for a smooth talker
from the street were going around in that decade, so I've seen them a
million times before. They were handled well enough though, so it at
least didn't have me rolling my eyes or anything.
The animation quality was on par with the last couple of films, though
much brighter and more colorful than either of them. The whole film was
much more lively and upbeat, while simultaneously playing host to one of
Disney's darker villains, who at one point can actually be heard
instructing his goons on how exactly to murder someone.
Will I end up watching it again and again? Probably not, but it's not
something I'll actively avoid either (like a few I could name).
This was my favorite movie for YEARS as a child and still one that I think back on fondly and intend to purchase on DVD if they un-vault it again. I LOVE the characters and I LOVE the music (why should I worry why caaaarree?? I'm embarrassed to tell you how frequently I find that stuck in my head...). This may actually be the first movie that I ever really loved. I had (have) a couple of the stuffed animals and I even had an Oliver and Company bedspread. I was a total fanboy about it. It's shocking to me that it's your first encounter with this film.
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