What's going on guys? I'm Tyler and in continuing my series of Disney movie reviews,
I'm here to let you know that "Oliver and Company" is NoPerfectMovie! And it's basically the 'Oliver Twist' story
in 80's New York with cats and dogs, and Oliver is a stray orange kitten who has to decide whether he wants to stay with a
gang of stray dogs led by Billy Joel as Dodger, who look out for him and protect him, or
a wealthy family where he brings joy to a very lonely a year old little girl, and this is...
not one of the most memorable or recognizable Disney movies-even Disney animators actually kind of frown upon this movie and
a part of me wants to chalk it up to the fact that this was being made around the same time as "Roger Rabbit",
another Disney movie that needed a lot more
time, money and effort in order to make it as groundbreaking and innovative as it was.
I also, if I wanted to, try and chalk it up to the fact that
it came out the exact same weekend as "Land Before Time" which has grown on to be a classic ever since, but
the truth is...
there's nothing really awful about "Oliver and Company". It's just
harmless and incredibly insignificant as a Disney movie or really as a movie in general.
But I'm gonna try and start with the positives. For starters all the voice actors do a really good job;
Joey Lawrence brings this
wide-eyed, naive innocence that you would expect with a character like Oliver Twist, and he does a really good job at that.
Cheech Marin as Tito
is so hilarious in just his line delivery. He puts a lot of energy in his in his performance and that performance alone
really sells a lot of the jokes that he delivers because some of them are pretty throw away,
But Marin makes it work. But easily the biggest highlight from the voice cast as many people would expect is Billy Joel as Dodger!
This is, as far as I know, the only actual acting job he's actually done and it's kind of a shame because he really
feels natural as the New York wise guy. It's basically why Disney hired him in the first place.
His line delivery makes every line he says sound really cool calm and
because it's him, he has easily the best song in the entire movie;
"Why Should I Worry" is catchy as hell! Look it up on YouTube! It's a really fun song to listen to!
The only voice actor I had a hard time with was Bette Midler who plays the most
spoiled pet character in the movie and it's not really her fault, it's just her character is written so obnoxious to the point where
It's hammered in too much that she's like the outsider from all the animals-
there are a lot of 'broken nail' or 'I'm so spoiled and lazy' type of jokes and
she also gets the most
annoying song out of all of them and it doesn't really help that they make her make these really awkward pauses like, "UHH",
that just-they feel like time wasting, not like actually part of the song. And the other positive is that the animation
really makes New York look as
spot-on as it does in real life. The amount of advertising and billboards that you see feel
incredibly realistic, tons of coca-cola ads everywhere. I actually saw like one joke in the background, there was a dentist office and the doctor's name was 'Pain', literally.
I don't know. It just seemed like a random joke, but it was a good one.
You can tell if you've ever been in New York City where these characters are, the
geographic settings look incredible.
A lot of people compared to Ralph Bakshi or "Fritz the Cat" or stuff like that, but
based on what I saw it felt like they were trying to replicate The New Yorker magazine covers
which I see those all the time at work, so that was what registered in my mind.
But as I kept watching I couldn't really
help the fact that I was noticing small animation glitches that I shouldn't notice and really shouldn't be there.
There are multiple times where characters are saying something but their mouths aren't moving
there are some characters where you can really notice the lines traced around them
but there are other characters that don't have any at all and
It's a touch distracting-just if you're a nerd for catching little problems like that.
And there's even one song called "Streets of Gold" which is
fun to listen to-it's not memorable in terms of lyrics, where
one woman is singing but in the background, her guy friends are supposed to be the background singers, even though the background singers are...
Clearly women, and the problem doesn't even stop there. The song has like two or three verses-
only one of them is in the movie and then it just cuts-
it fades midway just because apparently we needed to get to the plot even though
It's an hour and 15 minutes. You have enough time to fit the rest of the song in there,
and while we're at it you can fit in enough time to give Oliver a song because...
Yeah, you don't even realize it till the very end Oliver from "Oliver and Company" doesn't even have his own song!
Which would have been helpful in developing
more of a rapport between him and the stray dogs and him and the little girl because that was the-
one of the big problems; I couldn't feel any bond between
him and the gang or him and the little girl in all honesty!
The little girl is just a generic eight-year-old who's cute and wide-eyed and innocent and...
completely flawless if I'm being honest and that was the huge problem, but
him & the gang-I should have felt something because they spend the most amount of time together!
But no, you don't really learn anything about the other dogs. You don't learn anything that they have in common-sure
they're dirt-poor and hungry all the time, but that's not really
enough for me to latch on to them.
It doesn't help that Oliver is like, the one kid in the movie and the other animals are all grown adults...
Which I'm assuming is just because they needed celebrity voices and Joey Lawrence was on a show called "Blossom".
That was the closest thing he had to being a celebrity.
But yeah, like you don't learn any backstories about any of the characters and normally I'm all for the
imagining your own backstory thing, but they never give you an opportunity to do that.
But-and this was another big problem, the thing that bugged me the most was: that the message felt really
inconsistent!
Oliver Twist is a character who is
the exact embodiment of innocence; despite how dirt-poor he is, he never turns to crime and by the end of the book he is rewarded for that! And the other characters who
cintinue living a life of crime suffer the consequences as a result.
In this movie it tries to take an 'upper class versus lower-class' stance and try to
give lower class citizens the 'Well, we're thieves because nobody gives us anything' excuse and normally,
normally that can work and Disney's done that before with "Lady & the Tramp", "Aladdin", "Atlantis", but in this movie they're given-
the gang of dogs anyways
who spend the majority of the movie stealing from people who have never harmed them before, are given a chance of redemption when
they have to rescue this girl when she's in trouble and they
find common ground with her and her family, supposedly bridging a gap between upper and lower class...
but then by the end of the movie it seems like they're going right back to a life of crime and it's just passed off as a joke.
It's so inconsistent to the point where I'm not even sure if Oliver even knew as he was helping them out if they were even
criminals or if any of their behavior was bad, so
there was a real lack of conflict throughout the entire movie and it was clear was they there was supposed to be a conflict.
It's not like "Lady & the Tramp" where it is just a slice-of-life thing,
no, they're supposed to be a plot from beginning to end and I just didn't feel it.
So on the whole "Oliver and Company" is
not awful by any means 'cause the animation for the most part is nice to look, at the voice actors
do the best with what they're given, they're just not given a lot and there's only
one or two songs where I can really remember the words and...
there's not really much I can say other than "Oliver and Company" was
harmless, not really waste of time, it's only an hour and fifteen but you could have given at least 10 or 15 more minutes to add some more songs or some more character development.
So for all of those reasons, I'm gonna give "Oliver and Company",
2.5/5
Guys thanks as always for watching, if you've seen "Oliver and Company", if you loved it as a kid
feel free to let me know down below. It's clear as day why; it's completely harmless, it's cute.
And be sure to look forward to more Disney reviews in the future, and be sure to LIKE and subscribe!
Take care!