From the Vault: Oliver & Company

In which I review a randomly-selected movie from my collection.

Everybody has their own pick for "most criminally-underrated Disney film."  When you've been churning out feature-length animated movies for 77 years, with nearly 100 theatrical releases and over half as many straight-to-video releases - not to mention 9 Academy Awards and 20 nominations, including a nomination for Best Picture, across three associated animation studios - it's understandable that a few might get lost in the shuffle.  While the concensus favorite "lost classic" appears to be The Great Mouse Detective, I believe that 1988's Oliver & Company is the most overlooked and underappreciated Disney film.

In a loose adaptations of Oliver Twist, a kitten named Oliver (Joseph Lawrence), finds himself abandoned in New York City.  After helping a Jack Russel Terrier named Dodger (Billy Joel) steal some hotdogs from a vender, Oliver winds up joining his affectionate gang of con dogs and pickpockets.  Fagin (Dom DeLuise), the kindly, down-on-his-luck owner of the gang, has three days in which to repay the money he borrowed from ruthless loan-shark Sykes (Robert Loggia).  While assisting Fagin's gang with a con, Oliver winds up being adopted by seven-year-old Jenny Foxworth (Natalie Gregory) and has to choose between life with her and life with the gang.

Despite its lower profile, Oliver & Company easily holds it own alongside the much more celebrated Disney classics.  Rather than choosing a cast of established actors and praying that they can actually sing - like Gerard Butler's cringe-worthy turn as the alleged "Angel of Music" in The Phantom of the Opera - director George Scribner chose established musicians to voice his characters.  Pop star Billy Joel lends his sly, laid-back voice to street-smart Dodger and belts out what is easily the catchiest song of the film.  Bette Midler, best known for singing "Wind Beneath My Wings," voices the prima donna poodle Georgette.  Disco / Electric singer and Tony Award-winner Sheryl Lee Ralph voices the almost-motherly Saluki Rita and Huey Lewis - of Huey Lewis and the News fame -  headlines the utterly heartbreaking "Once Upon a Time in New York City."

The film's sleek, minimalist art style, with its palette of sunset oranges and midnight blues, is something that you'd expect to find in an Upper West Side art gallery instead of an 80's Disney movie.  It captures the manic energy and rapid tonal shifts that encapsulates New York.  The city is presented as a sprawling, overcrowded ecumonopolis which can transform into a completely different setting just by darting down the right street.  Posh 5th Avenue just a stone throw from the crooked alley where Oliver was chased by feral strays (which look identical to the wolves from Beauty and the Beast), itself caught somewhere between the middle-class streets where he was abandoned and Fagin's dockside shack.

While "Why Should I Worry" is the scene-stealing song that everybody always walks away singing to themselves, the true heart of the film is captured in its opening sequence.  As Huey Lewis sings "Once Upon a Time in New York City," we see Oliver get passed over time after time as smiling boys and girls walk away with his siblings until he's alone in a water-logged cardboard box with a sign that says "free."  The coreography, done with the same under-stated style as the rest of the film, plays with and compliments the song's lyrics, creating just as agonizingly sad a scene as anything from The Lion King.

Oliver & Company's greatest pitfall is its scant seventy-four minute run-time, which is just enough to establish its characters and their conflicts, but not enough to develop them.  Oliver is just a cute, orphaned kitten in search of a home; we get that he's plucky and determined, but we never really get to see him grow into anything more nuanced.  While we understand why Dodger is so hurt when Oliver chooses Jenny over him and the rest of the gang, we don't see enough of Oliver with the gang in order to feel like the choice is as deep of a betrayal it obviously is.  We see the pressure that Fagin is under to repay Sykes, but he's around only long enough for us to merely sympathize with him.  Relatively minor characters like Tito, Einstein, Francis and Rita are given so little development that they can simply be referred to as "the gang."

Despite its shortcomings - shortcomings which would largely be fixed in the Disney films of the 90's - Oliver & Company features a spectacular combination of great music, a compelling story and a unique, hazy art style all its own.  It is as engaging and emotional as the best of Disney's animated canon, even if it lacks the same level of sophistication.  Overall, I would give the film a solid 7.5.