2 1/2 Hours of Corny, Sugary, Happy-Go-Lucky Filler

Wow, what a way to adapt a complex, serious, melancholy, dark, sinister story and have absolutely no respect for the source material or your audience's intelligence. I wouldn't consider Oliver Twist to be one of my favorite works of literature (it is a classic that I respect), but even I'm looking at this adaptation and wondering, "what the hell were they thinking"?

Whenever you're adapting anything, it goes without saying that you got to keep the tone consistent and faithful to the source material. They did not do this here. I imagine that with a story like Oliver Twist, it's a difficult job deciding what to cut and what to leave into the story for running time purposes, so I would think that whoever is tasked with the job would keep whatever is essential to keep the story moving, developing the characters, and not wasting the audience's time.

But what do the writers do? They inject corny musical dance numbers that have nothing to do with the story or characters ("Consider Yourself" being the absolute worst example of this, especially since the ensemble had no business participating in the song that had nothing to do with them, and all they did was skip around and look like imbeciles). Not only are they way too upbeat, but they drag on for way too long and it takes forever for us to get back to the story. It took about 35 to 40 minutes for us to meet Fagin in this movie, whereas it should've been more like 20. The rest of Act I and a good chunk of Act II is just like this - chock-full of pointless, happy-go-lucky song and dance numbers that add nothing to the story and tell us nothing about the characters, (There is one song dedicated to perseverating on the fact that the boys like Nancy, and another one that beats us over the head with the fact that Fagin misses his boys when they go pick pocketing and they keep telling him "we'll be back soon") and make the story drag for way too long. As a result, certain important characters are cut and certain essential plot elements are either cut or left completely unresolved, all because they wanted to inject as many corny Broadway style song-and-dance numbers as they could. All style with very little substance.

That is a tragedy considering this is Oliver Twist we are talking about. Dark musicals have been made before and they've done very well, like Sweeney Todd, so they totally could've done this with Oliver Twist. What adds insult to injury is Fagin and Artful Dodger walking off into the sunset, Oliver not finding anything out about his family, and "Consider Yourself" playing over the end credits despite the fact that again, it does NOT fit the tone of Oliver Twist at all.

If you're a musical/literature lover, skip this one.