Oliver Twist [Not rated (but enough violence and peril for a PG): made for TV] [1997]
Overall movie: **
EJW content: Major role; he needed better directing and (accent!) coaching, but still gives some interesting glimpses into his character.
This is another "Disneyfied" classic and, in my opinion, its alterations don't work nearly as well as the ones in The Adventures of Huck Finn. At times the story's somewhat hard to follow because of what's been eliminated. One deletion I don't mourn is the book's ending, which deals with Fagin's eventual hanging and is openly anti-Semitic. It's important to be aware of the mindset of Dickens's time, in order to avoid repeating the past; I don't think children are ready to deal with the material on that level, though, so I believe the Disney folks were correct in omitting it. There's still a hint of this attitude surrounding the movie's Fagin for those who are familiar with the stereotypes, although it's never stated directly that he's Jewish.
This is a children's version of the story as opposed to, say, the recent BBC/PBS presentation, and things are played more broadly than subtly. Richard Dreyfuss mugs fittingly as Fagin, the actor playing Bill makes the character frightening enough to be effective, and Nancy is poignantly real (the best Nancy I've seen, actually). But I'm afraid the boy playing Oliver does nothing for me; I don't get any sense of a "person" behind the face. But, then, he is pretty young, so probably has some growing to do as an actor.
Elijah's character is the Artful Dodger--well, make that a "Disneyfied" Artful Dodger. The movie combines Dickens's original Dodger with another character in the book, who's older and more sympathetic. The result is that, while the movie's Dodger is still morally ambiguous, he's not as hard-edged as the original character. So, anyone hoping to see Elijah play a real "villain" will just have to keep waiting (unless they were lucky enough to catch his Homicide episode).
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the vacuum left by Oliver's character gets filled by the Artful Dodger after they meet, and it almost becomes more his story than Oliver's. I'm not a "film expert," but my guess is that this is a directing problem. The director is listed pretty far down in the credits, so maybe he has some growing to do in his career, also.
Of course, if your goal is to see as much of Elijah Wood's acting as possible, this problem isn't a problem at all. It does make me speculate, though, that a lack of effective direction might have been part of what led to Elijah's Dodger being too sympathetic a character. He's such a nice criminal that I found myself wondering why he didn't just chuck it all and go straight. This could also be a "Disneyfication" effect--the character the movie combines with Dickens's Artful Dodger actually does go straight toward the end of the book, while the book's Dodger remains resolutely criminal; the movie's hybrid character seems to have come out with something of a confused personality. As I said above, a lot of the alterations from book to movie in this case just don't work for me. In addition, the fact that the characters are played rather broadly in this movie basically wastes Elijah's talent for subtle portrayals (although he still manages to drop in an intriguing moment now and then).
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Book by Charles Dickens
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